IRS gives Bonuses to Disciplinary Problem Employees

[Robalo]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service has paid more than $2.8 million in bonuses to employees with recent disciplinary problems, including $1 million to workers who owed back taxes, a government investigator said Tuesday.

More than 2,800 workers got bonuses despite facing a disciplinary action in the previous year, including 1,150 who owed back taxes, said a report by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The bonuses were awarded from October 2010 through December 2012.

George's report said the bonus program doesn't violate federal regulations, but it's inconsistent with the IRS mission to enforce tax laws.

"These awards are designed to recognize and reward IRS employees for a job well done, and that is appropriate, because the IRS should encourage good performance," George said. "However, while not prohibited, providing awards to employees who have been disciplined for failing to pay federal taxes appears to create a conflict with the IRS's charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration."

Other examples of misconduct by workers getting bonuses included misusing government credit cards for travel, drug use, violent threats and fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits.

The IRS said it has developed a new policy linking conduct and performance bonuses for executives and senior level employees.

"Even without a formal policy in place over the past four years, the IRS has not issued awards to any executives that were subject to a disciplinary action," the IRS said in a statement. "We are also considering a similar policy for the entire IRS workforce, which would be subject to negotiations with the National Treasury Employees Union."

The IRS had about 100,000 workers during the period under review.

In the 2011 budget year, more than 70,000 IRS workers got cash bonuses totaling $92 million, the report said. In the 2012 budget year, nearly 68,000 workers got cash bonuses totaling $86 million.

The report said the IRS considers prior conduct before awarding permanent pay increases. "However, IRS officials stated that the IRS generally does not consider conduct issues when administering other types of awards," the report said.

There are no government-wide policies on providing bonuses to employees with conduct issues, the report said. However, a 1998 law calls for removing IRS employees who are found to have intentionally committed certain acts of misconduct, including willful failure to pay federal taxes.



OK, SO AT YOUR WORK, YOU MESS UP AND GET REPRIMANDED AND DISCIPLINED. IS YOUR BOSS GONNA GIVE YOU A BONUS FOR BEING A FOCKED OP EMPLOYEE? HELLL NO, HE'D PROBABLY FIRE YOU!!! BUT IF YA WORK AT THE IRS, COUNT ON A BONUS, EVEN IF YOU'RE A FOCK OP. MAKES PERFECT SENSE DOESN'T IT?

[Gilbert]

I've been doing it wrong.

[mgstei1]

Kinda like the CEO's and upper managers with banks and loan institutions after the last financial scare. The middleclass is going downhill fast and other countries middleclasses are surpassing the USA in incomes. Meanwhile the inequalities in wealth delta is worse.
And our Congress of NO is doing nothing!!

[Robalo]

Kinda like the CEO's and upper managers with banks and loan institutions after the last financial scare. The middleclass is going downhill fast and other countries middleclasses are surpassing the USA in incomes. Meanwhile the inequalities in wealth delta is worse.
And our Congress of NO is doing nothing!!

WTF does your BS have to do with the IRS rewarding bad employees? NOTHING. You seem to agree with the IRS-which makes sense since nothing else you post does.

Go hand out your pension to the welfare folks and run for POTUS- then we'll have another socialist in power. You know, someday you may wake up and realize that you had it good because some Gummint azzwipe mofo did not determine your job for you when you were 7 years old-but folks with attitudes like yours someday will cause that to happen, like what happened in Cuba under Castro and in Germany in the late 1930s under Adolph Hitler.

Lastly, the GD Mortgage crisis was due to that POS Barney "Rump Ranger" Frank and Bill "Sperm Splatterer" Clinton with their "give a loan to any dumbazz" policies they forced on the mortgage industry. In case you dint know, loaning money for a $500,000 house to a $35,000/year worker was just farging dumb and that worker could have easily obtained a "declared income loan" by declaring he made a sheetload of money and really did not-all thanks to your GD Dummycrats groping for votes from dumbazzes. So take your hatred of the folks that created this country and made YOUR damn Union Job and shove it.

[Robalo]

I've been doing it wrong.

Sorry Gilbert, you don't work for the IRS, so no bonus for messing up at work!!

[boom]

Kinda like the CEO's and upper managers with banks and loan institutions after the last financial scare. The middleclass is going downhill fast and other countries middleclasses are surpassing the USA in incomes. Meanwhile the inequalities in wealth delta is worse.
And our Congress of NO is doing nothing!!

The middle class has suffered more under 0bama than any other president since Carter.

[boom]

1. Workers are taking home their smallest slice of U.S. income on record: At around $15.8 trillion a year, the United States produces more in annual economic output than ever before, but it's not the worker that's benefiting. Instead, corporate profits now account for their largest slice of that pie on record, whereas the slice for workers has been steadily declining.
2. Inequality has widened: The recovery has been good to families earning more than $394,000 a year, but the other 99% of Americans have barely felt it.
Whereas income for the richest 1% had grown 31% from 2009 to 2012, income for the rest of Americans has barely budged in recent years, growing just 0.4% over the same time period.
That means the richest 1% of American families have captured 95% of the income gains in the recovery, according to economists at the forefront of income inequality research, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.

3. The job market still faces a gaping hole: From the job market's peak in early 2008 to its bottom in 2010, the U.S. economy lost 8.7 million jobs -- about half of which were in construction and manufacturing.
To this day, the United States still hasn't gained back all those jobs. The economy needs about 1.2 million jobs to get back to the 2008 level, and once population growth is added to the mix, the hole looks more like an abyss.
To fill that abyss, the economy still needs about 7.9 million jobs to get back to pre-recession conditions when unemployment was under 5%, according to Heidi Shierholz, economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute. Even with strong hiring, it could take at least five years to get there.
Part of the problem stems from workers dropping out of the labor force. If these "missing workers" were looking for work, Shierholz estimates the unemployment rate would be closer to 10% today, rather than its current 6.7%.

4. The poverty rate remains high: About 46.5 million Americans are living in poverty -- equivalent to 15% of the entire U.S. population. The poverty rate has barely budged during Obama's presidency, marking the first time it has remained at or above 15% for three consecutive years since 1965.
5. Record number of Americans are on food stamps: Amid the recession, the food stamp rolls surged, and as of 2013, 48 million Americans were receiving the benefits -- the highest number since the program began in 1969.

6. The manufacturing revival was a mirage: In his 2012 State of the Union address, the president spoke highly of manufacturers that were bringing jobs back to America. Specifically, he highlighted padlock-manufacturer Master Lock for returning 100 jobs to its Milwaukee factory.
Here's what he forgot to mention though: even after bringing a few jobs back to America, manufacturers like Master Lock are operating with a U.S. workforce that's a small fraction of the size it was two decades ago.
With automation playing a larger role, and many jobs remaining in cheaper overseas markets (like China and Mexico in Master Lock's case), the story of a manufacturing revival is "overwhelmingly imaginary," said Alan Tonelson, research fellow with the U.S. Business and Industry Council.
Overall, manufacturers have added only 568,000 jobs since 2010, about a quarter of those cut in the prior two years.

7. Global trade isn't helping much: Remember when the president unveiled an ambitious goal to double U.S. exports over a five-year period, starting in 2010? With one year left to go, he's far from getting there.
U.S. exports to the rest of the world totaled $1.1 trillion in 2009, adjusted for inflation, and reached $1.4 trillion in 2012. They would need to have a gangbusters year, growing another 57%, to reach Obama's goal by the end of 2014.
"By any reasonable standards, this goal has flopped miserably," Tonelson said.
Plus, more exports mean little for economic growth unless they happen to grow faster than imports. After Obama signed a free trade agreement with South Korea in 2011, exports grew, but imports from the country -- like cell phones, cars and auto parts -- grew even faster.
"The president talks about trade and lifting exports, but ignores imports. That's like reporting the results of a football game by giving the score of just one of the teams. You don't know who won," said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute.
EPI estimates the agreement resulted in the loss of 40,000 American jobs, as opposed to the 70,000 jobs the Obama administration said it would support.

[mgstei1]

Exactly Boom!! You are catching on quickly!! Please help Robalo with this! The Congress of No continues to stand in the way.
Boom for President!!

[boom]

You are just a one string banjo, aren't ya? lol

[boom]

Time for Obama to make up his mind on the Keystone pipeline? Don’t hold your breath



NO

[boom]

Stimulus Money for 'Shovel Ready' Projects; Where Did It Go?


NO

[boom]

Obama’s War on U.S. Energy


NO

[boom]

to have transparency and no closed door meetings. NO
-to end pork barrel lobbyists and earmarks NO
-to keep unemployment below 8 percent. NO
-to close Guantanamo as his first official policy. NO

-to end the hiring of former lobbyists into high White House jobs. NO
-to have open contract competition within the government. NO
-to disclose the names of all attendees at closed White House meetings. NO
-for a new era of cooperation with the GOP. NO

[Robalo]

Boom:

Ya forgot:

OBAMA'S WAR ON VIOLENCE

NO

Kinda cool that Obama gives guns to the Messican Drug Cartels so they can kill a US Border Patrol Agent. Plus let's not forget his former city "Chiraq" with 45 killings over Easter Weekend-another "SCORE" for the Dummycrats. I like that there will be 45 less democrats now-killed by democrats.

[boom]

Boom:

Ya forgot:

OBAMA'S WAR ON VIOLENCE

.

I was getting there. lol