WASHINGTON — Nearly 700 employees of Internal Revenue Service contractors owe $5.4 million in back taxes, said a report Wednesday by the agency’s inspector general.
More than half of those workers are supposed to be ineligible to do work for the IRS because they are not enrolled in installment plans to pay the taxes they owe.
Unlike other federal agencies, the IRS requires employees and those who work on agency contracts to comply with federal tax laws.
“The IRS should address tax noncompliance for these employees in a similar manner as it would for its own employees,” said J. Russell George, Treasury inspector general for tax administration.
The report said the IRS vigorously checks tax compliance among its own 90,000 employees. Contract workers should be held to the same standard, the report said.
