U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

22–195 PDF 2005

S. Hrg. 109–189

CIVILIAN CONTRACTORS WHO CHEAT ON THEIR

TAXES AND WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT IT

HEARING

BEFORE THE

PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 16, 2005

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island 

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota 

FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey 

MARK PRYOR, Arkansas

MICHAEL D. BOPP, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

TRINA D. TYRER, Chief Clerk 

PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota, Chairman 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

LINCOLN D. CHAFEE, Rhode Island 

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota 

FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey 

MARK PRYOR, Arkansas

RAYMOND V. SHEPHERD, III, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

C. JAY JENNINGS, SENIOR INVESTIGATOR

ELISE J. BEAN, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

MARY D. ROBERTSON, Chief Clerk 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Coleman .............................................................................................. 1

Senator Levin .................................................................................................... 5

Senator Collins ................................................................................................. 10

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 11

WITNESSES 

THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 2005

Gregory D. Kutz, Managing Director, Forensic Audits and Special Investigations, U.S. Government Accountability Office, accompanied by Steven J. 

Sebastian, Director, Financial Management and Assurance, U.S. Government Accountability Office; and John J. Ryan, Assistant Director, Forensic 

Audits and Special Investigations, U.S. Government Accountability Office ... 14

Hon. Mark W. Everson, Commissioner, Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Department of the Treasury .................................................................................... 30

Richard L. Gregg, Commissioner, Financial Management Service, U.S. Department of the Treasury .................................................................................... 32

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Everson, Hon. Mark W.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 30

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 76

Gregg, Richard L.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 32

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 91

Kutz, Gregory D.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 47

Ryan, John J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 47

Sebastian, Steven J.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 47

EXHIBITS 

1. The Federal Payment Levy Program Does Not Screen All Contractor Payments, chart prepared by the Majority Staff of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations ............................................................................ 96

2. U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) Report to Congressional 

Requesters, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT—Thousands of Civilian Agency 

Contractors Abuse the Federal Tax System With Little Consequence, June 

2005, GAO–05–637 ........................................................................................... 97

3. Federal Contractor Tax Compliance Task Force Report, September 2004 ... 186

4. Responses to supplemental questions for the record submitted to Gregory 

D. Kutz, Managing Director, Forensic Audit and Special Investigations 

and Steven J. Sebastian, Director, Financial Management and Assurance, 

Government Accountability Office ................................................................... 211

5. Responses to supplemental questions for the record submitted to The 

Honorable Mark Everson, Commissioner, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury ................................................................................. 224

Page

IV

6. Responses to supplemental questions for the record submitted to Richard 

L. Gregg, Commissioner, Financial Management Service, Department of 

the Treasury ...................................................................................................... 234

(1)

CIVILIAN CONTRACTORS WHO CHEAT ON 

THEIR TAXES AND WHAT SHOULD BE DONE 

ABOUT IT 

THURSDAY, JUNE 16, 2005

U.S. SENATE,

PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:34 a.m., in room 

563, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Norm Coleman, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Coleman, Collins, Levin, and Akaka. 

Staff Present: Raymond V. Shepherd, III, Staff Director and 

Chief Counsel; C. Jay Jennings, Senior Investigator; Mary D. Robertson, Chief Clerk; Mark Greenblatt, Counsel; Steven Groves, 

Counsel; Mark Nelson, Counsel; Brian White, Professional Staff 

Member; Katherine Russell, Detailee (FBI); Richard Fahy, Detailee 

(ICE); Caitlin Foley, Intern; Corey Bakken, Intern; Elise J. Bean, 

Staff Director/Chief Counsel to the Minority; Eric J. Diamant, 

Detailee, GAO; John Lavinsky, Intern; Audrey Soffer, Intern; Alec 

Rogers (Senator Collins); Richard Kessler and Robert Westerbrook 

(Senator Akaka). 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN 

Senator COLEMAN. This hearing of the Permanent Subcommittee 

on Investigations is called to order. Good morning. Good morning 

to Chairman Collins. It is great to be with you and Ranking Member Levin. Welcome to today’s hearing. 

This hearing is about tax cheats, not your everyday tax delinquents but rather Federal contractors who do not pay their fair 

share of taxes even though they receive billions of dollars from 

American taxpayers each year. The Subcommittee’s efforts, in concert with the hard work of the Government Accountability Office 

(GAO), have revealed that 33,000 Federal contractors at civilian 

agencies owe back taxes amounting to a whooping $3.3 billion. 

Some of these delinquent contractors provide crucial services to 

some of our most critical agencies, such as the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. 

To get a sense of the problem, let us review a handful of egregious cases. A contractor for the Justice Department was paid more 

than $700,000 this year, even though it owes more than $2 million 

in back taxes. Over the last few years, as the company refused to 

2

pay its proper share of taxes, it withdrew literally millions of dollars from its bank accounts. 

A contractor that provides security guard services to the Depart- ment of Homeland Security owes more than $400,000 in unpaid 

taxes. In addition to the company’s tax debt, the owners repeatedly 

failed to file individual income taxes and diverted the employees’ 

payroll taxes to a foreign bank account to build a house overseas. 

Despite that, the Federal Government paid this company more 

than $200,000 last year. 

A health care company that provides services to the Departments 

of Veterans’ Affairs and Health and Human Services was paid 

more than $300,000 from the Federal Government this year alone. 

That company owes more than $18 million in back taxes. While the 

company was cheating the American taxpayers, the owner of the 

company brought multi-million dollar properties and a fleet of luxury cars. 

These are just a handful of the 33,000 government contractors 

that failed to play by the rules. Our hearing today will show just 

how widespread the problem is. We will also examine the considerable obstacles that prevent the government from collecting back 

taxes from Federal contractors. 

But first, it would be helpful to review how we got here. Last 

year, this Subcommittee with the GAO uncovered disturbing evidence that the Defense Department had 27,000 contractors who 

had $3 billion in unpaid taxes. To make matters worse, GAO determined that the government’s program to collect unpaid taxes from 

Federal contractors, which is called the Federal Payment Levy Program, simply wasn’t working. The Federal Payment Levy Program 

should have collected more than $100 million from these contractors. Unfortunately, instead of the $100 million it should have collected, it obtained a paltry $680,000. 

In February of last year, I requested the IRS, Financial Management Service, Department of Defense, and other affected agencies 

to establish the Federal Contractor Tax Compliance Tax Force, 

which would identify and resolve problems that frustrated the Federal Payment Levy Program. I am pleased to report that as a direct 

result of the tax force’s efforts, tax levy collections from defense 

contractors have increased dramatically. 

For instance, in all of 2003, back taxes recovered from defense 

contractors amounted to a mere $680,000. In the first 7 months of 

this year, however, that number has risen to more than $11.5 million. At that rate, the government will recover $17.2 million in unpaid taxes by the end of 2005. That is an increase of more than 

2,500 percent in just 2 years. 

One of the principal problems we identified was that many Federal contractors provided false Taxpayer Identification Numbers 

when they register with the government. To remedy this problem, 

Senator Levin and I, and other interested Senators, introduced the 

Central Contractor Registry Act to ensure that Federal contractors’ 

Taxpayer Identification Numbers would be validated by the IRS. 

In light of the problems found with defense contractors, we asked 

GAO to determine if similar problems also existed in other Federal 

departments and agencies. In response to our request, GAO has 

conducted an extensive analysis and prepared an alarming report, 

3

which we are releasing today. As I mentioned earlier, GAO’s report 

reveals that 33,000 civilian contractors who receive billions of dollars from the U.S. Government in contract payments each year currently owe $3.3 billion in unpaid taxes. Even worse, most of these 

contractors withheld payroll taxes in trust for their employees and 

then failed to pay those taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. As 

a result, they cheated not only the American people, but their own 

employees, as well. 

Some of these contractors fraudulently used the withheld taxes 

for business or personal use. GAO investigators found contractors 

who bought luxury cars, multi-million-dollar properties, and vacation homes even though they owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes. 

One significant problem is Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue 

Code, which is designed to promote tax compliance by protecting 

honest taxpayers from having their names and other personal information disclosed. That privacy provision has been turned on its 

head and covers tax cheats who do not file their returns or do not 

pay their taxes. These tax cheats act with impunity because Section 6103 prevents the IRS from disclosing their identities. As a result, Federal contract officers cannot determine if a contractor owes 

taxes before signing a contract. 

Even the President of the United States is not immune from contracting with a tax cheat. In one case examined by the GAO, the 

Executive Office of the President contracted with a medical, dental, 

and hospital equipment company that owes nearly $2 million in 

unpaid taxes. In 2004, the company was paid over $900,000. While 

the Financial Management Service collected $6,000 in unpaid tax 

from some of these payments, it was not screening all such payments and, therefore, missed the opportunity to collect an additional $133,000 from this company. 

This is but one of the 50 worst examples that GAO identified in 

their investigation. Many of these documents demonstrate a continuing pattern of fraud and abuse in which some contractors use 

every available means to delay or avoid paying their taxes. In fact, 

27 of the 50 cases GAO investigated demonstrated a pattern of 

avoidance. 

For example, over a 20-year period, one contractor has repeatedly 

not paid taxes and accumulated tax debt of more than $900,000. 

He declared bankruptcy and reopened his business under a new 

name. In 2004, the Federal Government paid this delinquent contractor more than $1 million. 

In another case, a building maintenance company that owes 

nearly $1 million in unpaid tax, entered into an installment agreement with the IRS and then defaulted on that agreement. The company then made the IRS an offer in compromise to settle the tax 

debt. IRS rejected the offer and this company has avoided any tax 

levy for more than 5 years. 

In another case, the IRS entered into an installment agreement 

with a court reporting service with the Department of Justice who 

owes over $400,000 in unpaid tax. Last year, the company paid a 

mere $2,000 pursuant to the agreement. At that rate, I think the 

tax debt will be paid off in about 200 years. 

4

Other examples that GAO identified involve potential fraud that 

included an armed guard service company that has contracts with 

the Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency and owes nearly $400,000 in unpaid taxes. In 2004, the company 

was paid about $500,000. The owner of this company is under indictment for embezzlement and money laundering. 

A doctor who works for the Veterans’ Administration owes nearly $700,000 in unpaid taxes and was paid over $180,000 in 2004. The 

doctor’s payments should have been levied to collect $27,000. However, none of the payments were levied. 

A building maintenance services company that has numerous 

contracts with Federal agencies, including the Department of 

Treasury, owes over $700,000 in unpaid taxes. The company was 

paid over $4 million in 2004. Nearly $100,000 was offset for its unpaid taxes. However, they should have been levied for $630,000. 

Under these circumstances, we must bar certain companies and 

individuals from receiving Federal contracts. When individuals or 

companies demonstrate flagrant disregard for the tax system 

through a pattern of continued and repeated tax abuse, it is appropriate to publish their names and bar their receipt of Federal contracts. GAO’s report that is being released today found serious 

problems in the contractor payment system that permit these 

abuses to continue. 

For instance, GAO found that the Financial Management Service 

(FMS), which makes payments to contractors for the Federal Government, does not check all contractor payments to determine if 

taxes are owed. In addition, contractor payments that should be 

checked have inaccurate or incomplete information and cannot be 

matched to the Internal Revenue Service’s list of delinquent taxpayers. FMS failed to adequately update agency location codes and 

ensure that agencies submitted payment documentation that was 

complete and valid. As a result, the FMS did not match these payments and irrevocably lost the opportunity to collect an additional 

$50 million in back taxes. 

FMS is the lead agency for the Federal Payment Levy Program. 

FMS should not hide behind the mantra that FMS is simply the 

paying agent for the Federal Government and must rubber stamp 

Federal agencies’ payments. This position completely abdicates 

FMS’s true leadership and managerial responsibilities for the program. I am concerned that FMS has placed the payment of contractors ahead of recognized accounting principles that require complete and accurate documentation. 

Let me be clear. The system in place requires FMS to identify 

tax cheats and levy their payments. The contracting agency and 

GSA have no ability to identify the tax cheats or to bar them from 

doing business with the government. When FMS fails to do its job, 

the system fails, and the system and FMS are failing today. 

As the government’s paying agency, FMS has clear responsibility 

for ensuring adherence to basic requirements that must be met before making disbursements. I fully expect Commissioner Gregg and 

FMS to aggressively resolve the shortcomings identified by GAO. 

FMS must assure that contractors are screened up front and pay 

their taxes. FMS must be sure that agency documentation is complete before disbursements are made and must regularly update 

5

agency location codes. FMS must take the lead on requiring civilian 

agencies and departments to register their contractors in the Central Contract Registry, as required by the Federal Acquisition Regulations and directed by the Office of Management and Budget. 

Without this proper exercise of responsibility, billions of taxpayer 

dollars will continue to be paid to delinquent contractors without 

being levied. This is simply not acceptable. 

On the first panel this morning, we will hear from GAO representatives on the results of our request to determine if there are 

tax delinquent Federal contractors working for civilian departments and agencies. Last year, their hard work resulted in the 

identification of 27,000 Department of Defense (DOD) contractors 

who owe $3 billion in unpaid taxes, including 47 contractors that 

had flagrantly abused the tax system. 

On the second panel, we will hear from the IRS and FMS concerning actions they have taken or plan to take to ensure that civilian contractors pay the taxes they owe. I would like to make it 

clear that I am pleased with the results that the Federal Contractor Tax Compliance Task Force has achieved to date and that 

the Commissioners of IRS and FMS have agreed to continue the 

work of the task force. 

A lengthy statement, but a lot of information here, and I appreciate the indulgence of my colleagues as I went through that. 

Senator Levin. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN 

Senator LEVIN. Mr. Chairman, thank you, first of all, for your 

leadership on this issue. It has been critically important in the 

progress that we have made. You and your staff and our staffs 

have worked very closely together on this and we are making some 

progress, but as you pointed out, we have got a long way to go, but 

without your leadership, we wouldn’t have gotten to where we are. The current annual tax gap in this country is about $300 billion, and that $300 billion gap is the difference between the taxes that 

businesses, organizations, and individuals owe the Federal Government and what they have actually paid. When so many Americans 

fail to pay the taxes that they owe, it begins to undermine the fairness of our tax system, forcing honest taxpayers to make up the 

shortfall needed to pay for basic Federal protections, like Social Security, Medicare, and weapons needed by our men and women on 

the front lines of our military. 

Today’s hearing focuses on one particular group that contributes 

to that $300 billion tax gap, government contractors who get paid 

with taxpayer dollars while at the same time failing to pay their 

taxes. 

In a report released today, the GAO describes 33,000 civilian contractors who have dodged their tax obligations and have accumulated tax debts to Uncle Sam totaling at least $3.3 billion. In a related report released last year, GAO found 27,000 DOD contractors 

with accumulated tax debts totalling $3 billion. Those are huge 

numbers—tens of thousands of companies receiving contracts and 

payments on those contracts from the Federal Government, while 

owing billions of dollars in unpaid taxes. It is simply mind-boggling 

that this is allowed to continue. 

6

Tax dodging by any Federal contractor is unfair, not only to the 

honest taxpayers left to make up the difference, but it is also unfair to honest companies that have to compete against the tax 

dodgers that aren’t paying their fair share. 

The main responsibility here has got to be with FMS, as our 

Chairman has said. There should be a red flag on any contract 

where a company owes back taxes, and there should be monies 

withheld from any payments on that contract until those back 

taxes are paid. 

There are some tax dodgers who simply should not receive contracts to begin with, since tax debts should be paid before more 

contracts are awarded or, at a minimum, until arrangements are 

made to pay the back taxes. GAO tells us that about $1.2 billion, or 37 percent of the unpaid 

taxes owed by the civilian contractors involve payroll taxes. Now, 

what that means is that contractors fail to send to the IRS sums 

withheld from employees’ wages for Federal, Social Security, and 

Medicare taxes. The failure to send those payroll taxes to the IRS 

is more than a debt that is owed to the Federal Government. It is 

a crime, since payroll funds withheld from employees’ wages are 

held in trust, and it is illegal for companies not to send those funds 

to the government. Another $1.5 billion, or 40 percent of the total, involve unpaid 

corporate income taxes. All of the $3.3 billion are unpaid taxes which a court has determined or the taxpayer has admitted are owed to the government. 

The taxes at issue here are not disputed amounts, in other words. 

The GAO also took a closer look at 50 of the contractors with unpaid taxes and found egregious examples of companies dodging 

taxes, sometimes for years, and in some cases spending money 

meant for payroll taxes on luxuries for themselves, such as expensive homes or cars. Despite those abuses, those contractors kept 

getting contracts and payments on those contracts using taxpayers’ 

dollars. 

The Chairman has identified a number of specific cases, and I 

am not going to repeat those, but they are part of my entire statement which will be made part of the record, Mr. Chairman, with 

your order. 

Senator COLEMAN. Without objection. 

[The prepared statement of Senator Levin follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN 

The current annual tax gap in this country is about $300 billion. That $300 billion 

gap is the difference between the taxes that businesses, organizations, and individuals owe the federal government and what they’ve actually paid. When so many 

Americans fail to pay the taxes that they owe, it begins to undermine the fairness 

of our tax system, forcing honest taxpayers to makeup the shortfall needed to pay 

for basic federal protections—like social security, Medicare, and the weapons needed 

by our men and women on the frontlines of our military. Today’s hearing focuses on one particular group that contributes to that $300 billion tax gap—government contractors who get paid with taxpayer dollars while, at 

the same time, failing to pay their taxes. In a report released today, GAO describes 

33,000 civilian contractors who have dodged their tax obligations and accumulated 

tax debts to Uncle Sam totaling at least $3.3 billion. In a related report released 

last year, GAO found 27,000 DOD contractors with accumulated tax debts totaling 

$3 billion. Those are huge numbers—tens of thousands of companies receiving contracts and payments on those contracts from the federal government, while owing 

7

billions of dollars in unpaid taxes. It’s simply mind boggling that this is allowed to 

continue. 

Tax dodging by any federal contractor is unfair—not only to the honest taxpayers 

left to make up the difference, but it’s also unfair to the honest companies that have 

to compete against the tax dodgers that aren’t paying their fair share. 

The main responsibility here has got to be with FMS, as our Chairman has said. 

There should be a red flag on any contract where a company owes back taxes and 

there should be monies withheld from any payments on these contracts until those 

back taxes are paid. Some tax dodgers should not receive contracts to begin with—

their tax debts should be paid before more contracts are awarded, or, at a minimum, 

until arrangements are made for them to pay the back taxes. GAO tells us that about $1.2 billion, or 37% of the unpaid taxes owed by civilian 

contractors, involve payroll taxes. What that means is that contractors failed to send 

to the IRS sums withheld from employees’ wages for federal, Social Security, and 

Medicare taxes. The failure to send those payroll taxes to the IRS is more than a 

debt owed to the federal government—it is a crime, since payroll funds withheld 

from employees’ wages are held in trust, and it is illegal for companies not to send 

those funds to the government. Another $1.5 billion, or 40% of the total, involve unpaid corporate income taxes. All of the $3.3 billion are unpaid taxes which a court 

has determined or the taxpayer has admitted are owed to the government. The 

taxes at issue here are not disputed amounts, in other words. 

GAO also took a closer look at 50 of the contractors with unpaid taxes and found 

egregious examples of companies dodging taxes, sometimes for years, and, in some 

cases, spending money meant for payroll taxes on luxuries for themselves such as 

expensive homes or cars. Despite those abuses, those contractors kept getting contracts and payments on those contracts using taxpayer dollars. For example, one 

contractor owing $1 million in unpaid taxes was paid $1.5 million in FY2004 by the 

Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies. Another contractor 

owing $900,000 had a 20-year history of opening a business, failing to remit payroll 

taxes to the IRS, closing the business, and then repeating the cycle. On and on, 

while continuing to get more government contracts. 

Tax chiseling by federal contractors is not a new story. In 1997, Congress enacted 

the Taxpayer Relief Act which, in part, authorized federal agencies to withhold 15 

percent of any federal payment going to a person with an outstanding tax debt. The 

goal was to stop taxpayer dollars from being paid to a tax deadbeat, unless a portion 

was withheld off the top to reduce that person’s tax debt. Last year, we increased 

the percentage that can be withheld from a contract payment to up to 100%. 

The Taxpayer Relief Act sought to apply a common sense principle to government 

operations: to offset the taxpayer dollars sent to people who haven’t paid their tax 

bills by directing a percentage of the total be withheld to reduce their tax debt. That 

common sense principle isn’t always easy to apply in a government that has hundreds of thousands of contractors on the books, but it must be applied and the computer capability to apply that principle exists. 

The Financial Management Service or FMS in the Treasury Department took 

until July 2000 to establish an automated tax levy program under a larger Treasury 

Offset Program that handles offsets from government payments for a variety of reasons. It took another two years—until the end of 2002—for DOD to follow suit. 

GAO estimates that, last year, the tax levy program for civilian contractors ought 

to have collected a minimum of $50 million, but FMS actually collected only about 

$16 million, or just over 30% of the projected total. The GAO report spells out a 

number of reasons why this collection rate is so low. 

First, out of the $250 billion in contractor payments last year, the GAO determined that $100 billion was made in ways that made it virtually impossible for a 

payment to result in a computer match and tax levy. About $66 billion of those payments were made with payment forms filled out by various federal agencies that 

left out key information. The FMS shouldn’t accept those payment forms, but they 

have so far. Key information is left out by agencies; nonetheless, checks are sent. 

That information which is left out includes the contractor’s name or taxpayer identification number, which you have to have for a computer match. Another $10 billion 

was paid on government-issued credit cards held by federal agencies, which means 

that the payments were directed to the bank administering the credit cards and the 

bank then paid the contractors, instead of direct payments to the relevant contractors. Since the agency payments did not name the contractors, they couldn’t be 

matched against the IRS tax data. Still another $25 billion of payments were made 

through wire transfers that also were directed to banks instead of contractors, and 

so did not trigger any computer matches with IRS data. Each of these problems can 

and should be addressed to increase the chances for computer matches identifying 

contractors with unpaid taxes. It should not be difficult to simply red flag the conVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:37 Dec 05, 2005 Jkt 022195 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\DOCS\22195.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
8

tractor to say that no payment should be made to that contractor, through a bank 

or otherwise, without the deduction for back taxes being made. Second, of the $150 billion in contractor payments that were subjected to the tax 

levy computer matches, the GAO found that too many failed to result in an actual 

levy because the IRS had failed to mail a 30-day notice to the relevant contractors 

warning them of an upcoming levy. After last year’s hearing, to address the tax levy 

notice problem, the IRS initiated a new approach with DOD contractors. Instead of 

waiting for the first contract payment to mail a tax levy notice, the IRS instead 

evaluated the tax status of contractors as soon as they were awarded a contract and 

immediately sent tax levy notices to those contractors with unpaid taxes. This new 

approach apparently resulted in the mailing of 6,000 accelerated notices. That’s a 

bit of progress, although we have to wait to see the extent to which this new approach solves the notice problem and it needs to be applied to civilian contractors 

as well. 

Other approaches to the notice problem should also be considered. One possibility 

that should be explored is combining tax levy notices with the tax delinquency notices that are already mailed to contractors with unpaid taxes. Another possibility 

would be to amend the Prompt Payment Act to allow FMS and DOD to delay contract payments to tax delinquent contractors until the 30-day tax levy notice period 

expires and a levy can properly be placed on their payments. Another approach is 

to include a contract provision in the original contract that simply says if you owe 

back taxes, you waive your right to a levy notice. Alternatively, we can modify the 

law to say that notices of levies are not required on those contracts where back 

taxes are owed. 

Federal contractors should not be allowed to get away with cheating on their 

taxes. Dodging taxes is never acceptable, but it is particularly galling when engaged 

in by folks who make their living from taxpayer dollars. 

It is clear that we can make major progress in the tax levy program and ensure 

that deadbeat contractors start paying their tax debts. That progress has already 

begun. After the Subcommittee’s hearing last year on DOD contractors, the IRS, 

DOD and FMS formed a joint task force to improve the DOD tax levy program. In 

the span of about a year, using improvements initiated by this task force, DOD has 

increased its collections from $1 million in 2003, to a likely total in 2005 of $17 million. While $17 million is still far short of the $100 million that GAO thinks DOD 

ought to be collecting each year, and even farther from the $3 billion owed by DOD 

contractors, it is a start. 

The improvements made in the DOD tax levy program include the following: 

• FMS and DOD have automated the tax levy computer matching system for 

18 out of DOD’s 20 payment systems, up from just 1 system in 2004. The 

final 2 DOD payment systems are scheduled for automation during 2005. • FMS is now conducting tax levy computer matches twice per week instead of 

once per week, resulting in more computer matches. 

• The IRS has cleaned up the tax levy database by removing $27 billion of uncollectable tax debt. 

• The IRS has eliminated a policy that delayed tax levies on federal contractors 

for one year or until an IRS revenue agent was assigned to the relevant case. 

• The IRS is now checking the tax status of DOD contractors as soon as a contract is awarded, instead of waiting for the first contract payment, so that tax 

levy notices can be mailed earlier. 

• In October, DOD will begin requiring everyone who files an application with 

the Central Contractor Register to become a potential bidder on federal contracts to consent to having their taxpayer identification numbers validated by 

the IRS. The end result will be a more accurate and complete database of contractor TINs.

Each of these steps is moving us toward a more effective tax levy program, but 

a lot more needs to be done, including ensuring timely tax levy notices, barring payments to contractors using agency forms that lack key information needed for tax 

levy computer matches, and barring contractors with unpaid taxes from getting paid 

via government-issued credit cards or wire transfers. Even better would be putting 

a hold on contract awards to contractors owing an undisputed amount of unpaid 

taxes. 

Last year, Senator Coleman and I introduced legislation to improve the tax levy 

program by strengthening taxpayer identification numbers. We reintroduced this 

bill in this Congress as S. 679. In the meantime, the IRS, DOD and FMS have voluntarily taken some of the steps called for in that bill, which we appreciate. Senator 

Coleman and I are now planning to introduce a more comprehensive bill to address 

the broader spectrum of problems that impede the tax levy program. 

9

Most federal contractors provide valuable goods or services, and do so while paying their taxes. Other contractors, however, take payment in taxpayer dollars, while 

dodging the taxes owed to Uncle Sam. This tax dodging hurts honest taxpayers, 

honest businesses, and our country as a whole. Effective use of the federal tax levy 

program is necessary to help keep the tax dodger’s hand out of the taxpayer’s wallet. 

I commend Senator Coleman for his leadership on this important issue. I look forward to the testimony today.

Senator LEVIN. Tax chiseling by Federal contractors is not a new 

story. As our Chairman pointed out, in 1997, Congress enacted the 

Taxpayer Relief Act which in part authorized Federal agencies to 

withhold 15 percent of any Federal payment going to a person with 

an outstanding tax debt. The goal was to stop taxpayers dollars 

from being paid to a tax deadbeat unless a portion was withheld 

off the top to reduce that person’s tax debt. Last year, we increased 

the percentage that could be withheld from a contract payment to 

up to 100 percent. 

The Taxpayer Relief Act sought to apply a common sense principle to government operation, to offset the taxpayers’ dollars sent 

to people who haven’t paid their tax bill by directing a percentage 

of the total be withheld to reduce their tax debt. That common 

sense principle isn’t always easy to apply when the government has 

hundreds of thousands of contractors on the books, but it must be 

applied, and the computer capability to apply that principle is here. 

This may have been difficult without computers, but this should 

not be so difficult now that we have computers. 

There are a number of reasons why the collection rate is low, and 

I am just going to spend a minute or two on some of these reasons. 

We have made progress, as the Chairman has pointed out, but we 

still have a low collection rate from these contractors. 

First, out of the $250 billion in contractor payments last year, the GAO determined that $100 billion was made in ways that 

made it virtually impossible for a payment to result in a computer 

match and a tax levy. About $66 billion of those payments were 

made with payment forms filled out by various Federal agencies 

that left out key information. Well, the FMS shouldn’t accept those 

payment forms, but they so far have. Key information left out by 

agencies. Nonetheless, checks are sent. That information which is 

left out includes the contractor’s name or a Taxpayer Identification 

Number, which you have to have for a computer match. 

Another $10 billion was paid on government-issued credit cards 

held by Federal agencies, which means that the payments were directed to the bank administering the credit cards and the bank 

then paid the contractors, instead of the agencies’ making direct 

payments to relevant contractors. It should not be difficult to simply red flag a contract and to say that no payment should be made 

on that contract to a bank or otherwise, or wire transferred, or in 

any other way, without the deduction for back taxes being made. 

Now, of the $150 billion in contractor payments that were subjected to tax levy computer matches, the GAO found that too many 

failed to result in an actual levy, because the IRS had failed to 

mail a 30-day notice to the relevant contractors warning them of 

an upcoming levy. That should be easily correctable with a contract 

provision in the original contract that simply says, if you owe back 

taxes, you waive your right to contest a levy, or we will modify the 

10

law if necessary to say that notices of levies are not required in 

those contracts where back taxes are owing. 

So progress has been made, but we have got a long way to go, 

and Federal contractors should not be allowed to get away with 

cheating on their taxes. Dodging taxes is never acceptable, but it 

is particularly galling when engaged in by folks who make their 

living from taxpayer dollars. 

Mr. Chairman, again, I thank you for your leadership. You have 

been doing critically important work, and I commend you for it. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Senator Levin, and my thanks to 

you and your staff for the strong partnership. It has been a very 

bipartisan effort and hopefully we are getting some results. 

Chairman Collins. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN COLLINS 

Chairman COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me join Senator Levin in commending you for your leadership on this issue, 

but let me also commend Senator Levin. I know the two of you 

have worked very closely on this important investigation. 

I am pleased to join you today for the second hearing on government contractors who cheat on their taxes. Federal contractors 

have an obligation to operate according to the highest ethical 

standards. That is not just my opinion, that is the law. The law requires bidders for Federal contractors to be found to be responsible. 

I don’t understand how a contractor who is delinquent on Federal 

taxes could meet the standard of being a responsible bidder. 

The Subcommittee’s investigation reveals a shocking lack of such 

ethical standards. At our first hearing last year, we learned that 

civilian contractors doing business with the Department of Defense 

owed an estimated $3 billion in back taxes at the end of fiscal year 

2002. At that time, the GAO advised us that this problem of tax 

delinquency and noncompliance may not be confined to the Department of Defense, and indeed, further investigation demonstrates 

clearly that it is not. 

The estimated tax delinquency of contractors doing business with 

other government agencies, including key departments such as the 

Department of Homeland Security and NASA, may well be in excess of $3.3 billion. Among the 50 civilian agency contractors investigated by the GAO for the report we will discuss today, all were 

found to have engaged in abusive or potentially criminal activity. 

I think it is important for us to emphasize that these tax delinquencies were not the result of legitimate hardship. They were the 

result of these contractors willfully deciding that the laws of our 

country do not apply to them. Rather than pay their fair share of 

taxes on income derived from the taxes of others, they chose instead to inflate their own salaries, to purchase multi-million-dollar 

properties, and in some cases to divert payroll taxes withheld from 

employees. In one egregious case, they diverted that money to an 

offshore bank to finance a luxury home overseas. And like Senator 

Levin, I find the cases where payroll taxes were not remitted to be 

particularly outrageous. That isn’t even the contractors’ money. 

That is money that belongs to the employees and it is just totally 

unacceptable that this is occurring. 

11

The case studies described in the GAO report do not merely tell 

a story of how a business from time to time can pull a fast one. 

In far too many cases, contractors pull fast ones repeatedly, chronically, and apparently without meaningful penalty. 

One example particularly stood out to me. That is the owner of 

a business that provides temporary workers which currently owes 

$900,000 in delinquent taxes. Through its investigation, GAO discovered that this contractor has a nearly 20-year history of closing 

businesses with tax debts, opening up new ones, and then incurring new tax debts. In other cases, the GAO found that some contractors with unpaid Federal taxes had been convicted of crimes, 

such as embezzlement and money laundering, and yet they still received government contracts. 

Mr. Chairman, a system that permits participation by such contractors is a system in failure. I think it is important that we focus 

not just on the levy system, which is after the fact to catch those 

who fall through the cracks. We have to correct this up front so 

that there is a review that prevents contractors from receiving Federal contracts in the first place if they are cheating on their taxes. 

I very much look forward to hearing our witnesses today. I would 

especially like to note that Greg Kutz is here today in his first appearance as head of the GAO’s new Forensic Audit and Special Investigations Unit. Earlier this year, Senator Lieberman and I encouraged the Comptroller General to establish this new unit so 

that we could focus more on agency and financial management of 

high-risk areas. I believe that this new unit is going to greatly improve our oversight capacity and I am very pleased that Mr. Kutz 

has been chosen to lead it. 

So thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for your attention and commitment to this matter of such importance. We simply cannot allow 

contractors that get paid with taxpayer dollars to refuse to pay 

their fair of Federal taxes. Thank you. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Senator Collins. Senator Akaka. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I thank 

you, Chairman Coleman, for holding this hearing and for your continued commitment to closing the gap between what Federal contractors owe in taxes and what is collected by the Federal Government. 

As our budget deficit increases and the national debt grows, it 

is essential that the Federal Government does everything possible 

to collect what is due. And when we hear guesses of the amount 

that is due, it is amazing. No business could survive very long with 

billions of dollars in accounts receivable and little success in collecting them. 

Exactly how much is owed? According to the Government Accountability Office, $3.3 billion in unpaid taxes is owed by 33,000 

civilian contractors. What is staggering is that this amount is in 

addition to another 27,000 DOD contractors who owe an additional 

$3 billion. That is a total of $6.3 billion in Federal tax debt owed 

by Federal contractors. 

I am particularly disturbed that two-thirds of the outstanding 

tax debt is for failure to remit payroll taxes. This is not about busiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:37 Dec 05, 2005 Jkt 022195 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\22195.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
12

nesses that run into financial hardship and don’t have money to 

pay taxes. No. This is about employers who collect money from employees in trust, pocket the money, and then continue to profit from 

Federal contracts. This has been mentioned by the Chairman of our 

full Committee. 

In investigative case studies, GAO found patterns of abuse with 

some contractors. While honest Americans are paying their taxes, 

these tax cheats open a business, profit from Federal contracts, 

steal the payroll taxes, close the business, then start all over again. 

In the meantime, they have purchased luxury cars, commercial real 

estate, and in one case, even a professional sports team. 

The Financial Management Service of the Treasury Department 

bills itself as the Federal Government’s money manager. FMS is responsible for disbursing payments for most Federal agencies. FMS 

is also responsible for collecting money owed to Federal agencies by 

offsetting various types of payments that pass through FMS, including payments to civilian contractors. 

Since 1996, FMS has administered the Treasury Offset Program 

(TOP), to collect delinquent non-tax debts owed to Federal agencies. FMS collects delinquent tax debt on behalf of the Internal 

Revenue Service through the Federal Payment Levy Program. 

Under the levy program, IRS sends tax debts to TOP for collection. 

Today, we will learn if FMS is living up to its responsibilities as 

the government’s money manager. 

Under TOP, the names and Taxpayer Identification Numbers 

(TINs), of debtors in an FMS database are matched against the 

names and TINs of recipients of Federal payments. If there is a 

match, the Federal payment is reduced or offset to satisfy that 

debt. 

The questions we ask today are, why aren’t there more matches in TOP, and why was only $16 million collected last year from contractor payments? 

According to GAO, there are various reasons that prevent matching: No name, no TIN, an invalid TIN, and lack of an agency location code, to name a few. GAO estimates that FMS could collect 

$50 million, or three times more than what is collected now, If 

FMS simply exercised greater oversight to ensure that these data 

fields are complete and accurate. It should be as simple as no TIN, 

no money. 

In March 2004, I asked GAO to expand its original review of unpaid Federal taxes by contractors to determine how much FMS is 

collecting from Federal contractor payments for unpaid State taxes. 

I thank Chairman Coleman and Ranking Member Levin for extending this courtesy to me. The Debt Collection Improvement Act of 

1996 allows FMS to collect State tax debts from Federal payments 

to contractors. Before FMS can do so, a State must enter into a reciprocal agreement with FMS that would require the State to collect unpaid Federal tax debt from State payments. 

The Federal Government and the States have worked together to 

collect unpaid tax debts from State and Federal tax refunds. In 

2004, for example, FMS collected $229,000 on behalf of my home 

State of Hawaii. But there has not been similar leadership efforts 

by FMS to collect State tax debts from Federal contractor payments. 

13

According to GAO, FMS said that no States expressed interest. 

However, the States that were contacted by GAO said they were 

unaware of this provision and are interested in pursuing such 

agreements. 

I am pleased that Mr. Gregg, the head of FMS, is here with us 

today. I encourage you, Mr. Gregg, to do whatever is necessary to 

make this happen. While this hearing is about how a Federal program is being used to collect tax debt, the larger goal is to ensure 

that those who receive the benefit of Federal contracts act as good 

corporate citizens. 

Let me state this. Federal contractors must be held accountable 

for their actions. This is why, for example, I introduced the Federal 

Contractor Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction for Human Trafficking Offenses Act of 2005 just this week. My bill, S. 1226, closes a loophole 

in Federal criminal law and allows the prosecution in U.S. court of 

Federal contractors who engage in human trafficking overseas. And 

so we are looking at Federal contractors. 

I look forward, Mr. Chairman, to the testimony of our witnesses 

on the tax issue, and Mr. Chairman, I thank you so much for what 

you are doing in this regard. Thank you. 

Senator COLEMAN. Senator Akaka, thank you. I want to thank 

you for your keen interest in this area and all the focus that you 

have put on it. It has been extraordinarily helpful and it is greatly 

appreciated. 

And I want to thank Chairman Collins for her work in establishing the Office of Forensic Audits and Special Investigations. I 

would say, and we are going to get a chance to hear from Mr. Kutz 

in a little bit, but to him and to Mr. Ryan and Mr. Sebastian, we 

do appreciate the work that you have done. We have fought to continue the relationship that this Committee has and Subcommittee 

has with you to identify fraud, waste, and abuse. So I want to 

thank the Chairman. We are already reaping dividends from the 

focus that has been provided. 

I would like to welcome our first panel to this important hearing. 

Gregory Kutz, Managing Director, Forensic Audits and Special Investigations, Government Accountability Office; Steve Sebastian, 

Director of Financial Management and Assurance Team at GAO; 

and finally, John Ryan, Assistant Director of the Office of Forensic 

Audits and Special Investigations at GAO. 

GAO is here to testify on our request for investigation of civilian 

agency contractors who are abusing the Federal tax system by not 

paying their taxes. The purpose of this hearing is to identify further corrective actions that can be taken to improve the effectiveness of the Federal Payment Levy Program. 

It is good to see you gentlemen here again. I appreciate your 

hard work that has resulted in the identification of tens of thousands of Federal contractors who owe billions of dollars in unpaid 

taxes. I also appreciate your efforts and look forward to hearing 

about Federal contractors at civilian agencies who are not paying 

their taxes, including the problems you have identified with regard 

to collecting unpaid taxes from them. 

Before we begin, pursuant to Rule 6, all witnesses before the 

Subcommittee are required to be sworn. At this time, I would ask 

you all to please stand and raise your right hand. 

14

1The prepared statement of Mr. Kutz, Mr. Sebastian, and Mr. Ryan appears in the appendix 

on page 47. 2See Exhibit No. 2, GAO Report entitled FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT—Thousands of Civilian Agency Contractors Abuse the Federal Tax System With Little Consequence, which appears 

in the Appendix on page 97. 

Do you swear the testimony you are about to give before the Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 

so help you, God? 

Mr. KUTZ. I do. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. I do. 

Mr. RYAN. I do. 

Senator COLEMAN. As you are well aware, gentlemen, having 

been here before, we will be using a timing system today. When the 

green light turns to amber, give yourself about another minute to 

finish up. Your full statements will be entered into the record in 

their entirety. 

We will begin with Mr. Kutz, then Mr. Sebastian will be presenting the GAO statement this morning, as I understand. Gentlemen, please proceed. 

TESTIMONY OF GREGORY D. KUTZ,1 MANAGING DIRECTOR, 

FORENSIC AUDITS AND SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; ACCOMPANIED BY 

STEVEN J. SEBASTIAN,1 DIRECTOR, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND ASSURANCE, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; AND JOHN J. RYAN,1 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, 

FORENSIC AUDITS AND SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Mr. KUTZ. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, and 

Chairman Collins, thank you for the opportunity to discuss contractors with tax problems. 

Last year, we testified that DOD contractors were abusing the 

Federal tax system with little or no consequence. At that hearing, 

you expressed concerns that this was a governmentwide problem. 

Unfortunately, our bottom line today is that thousands of civilian 

agency contractors are also abusing the tax system. 

Our testimony has two parts. First, I will discuss contractors 

that abuse the tax system, and second, my colleague, Mr. Sebastian, will discuss why these contractors face few consequences. 

First, we found that 33,000 civilian agency contractors had over 

$3 billion of unpaid Federal taxes.2 We investigated the activity of 

50 of these contractors, including the owners, officers, and any related businesses. For all 50 case studies, we found abusive and potentially criminal activity related to the Federal tax system. 

Forty-eight of these case study contractors, as you have all 

mentioned, had unpaid payroll taxes, which represent amounts 

withheld from employee wages for individual income taxes, Social 

Security, and Medicare. However, rather than fulfill their role as 

trustees of this money and forward it to the IRS, these contractors 

diverted the money for the use of their business or for personal 

gain. Regardless of the cause, willful failure to remit payroll taxes 

is a felony. 

While these companies were stealing millions of dollars from the 

government, as shown on the posterboard, our investigations found 

15

the owners spending money on their own professional sports team, 

gambling, million-dollar homes, a shopping mall, luxury automobiles, and a recreational vehicle worth hundreds of thousands of 

dollars. Diversion schemes included the transfer of money to a foreign bank account, inflated salaries for the owners and officers, and 

millions of dollars of cash withdrawals. 

Some of the owners were simply poor business managers. However, others clearly accumulated substantial personal wealth at the 

same time their companies failed to pay their taxes. 

The companies that we investigated were small to mid-sized and 

were closely held. Industries included health care, building maintenance, manufacturing, security, and a casino. Ironically, these potential felons are doing business with the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice. 

Senators, let me end by saying that there is something fundamentally wrong with this picture. If we can’t trust these contractors to pay their taxes, then how can we trust them to guard our 

Federal buildings, to manufacture parts for the Space Shuttle, or 

to provide health care for our veterans? Instead of these owners 

and officers doing time, the government is paying them millions of 

dollars for their time. 

Mr. Sebastian will now discuss why little has been done to deal 

with abusive contractors. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Kutz. Mr. Sebastian. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. Thank you, Mr. Kutz. 

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, and Chairman 

Collins, Federal law presently does not prohibit contractors with 

unpaid taxes from receiving government contracts. However, tools 

exist to assist in collecting unpaid taxes from contractors, most notably the Federal Payment Levy Program. 

Unfortunately, despite some progress, substantial amounts of potential tax collections under the program go uncollected each year. 

We estimate that in fiscal year 2004, the Federal Government 

could have collected as much as $350 million in outstanding taxes 

from contractors had all tax debt owed by civilian agency contractors been eligible for levy action, and all contractor payments disbursed by Treasury’s Financial Management Service been subject 

to a 15 percent levy. 

In contrast, as you noted, FMS collected just $16 million in outstanding taxes from these contractors. This gap between potential 

and actual collections, which we refer to as the levy collection gap, 

results from both exclusions of substantial tax debt from the program and a lack of proactive oversight and management. I want to 

briefly discuss both components. 

First, of $269 billion in outstanding Federal taxes, only $35 billion, or 13 percent, is eligible for immediate levy action. The 

posterboard provides a graphic illustration of this. As it shows, $71 

billion of tax debt, or about 26 percent, is excluded because of statutory restrictions, such as bankruptcy. Another $100 billion, or 

about 37 percent, is excluded by IRS policy restrictions, including 

what IRS refers to as hardship cases. 

Of the $98 billion that is forwarded to the levy program, only 30 

percent is actually eligible for immediate levy action. The other 70 

16

percent is not eligible until IRS’s collection due process is completed, which can take months and sometimes years. 

Second, with respect to FMS’s oversight and management of the 

levy program, FMS failed to subject to levy tens of billions of dollars in payments it disbursed to contractors in fiscal year 2004 due 

to control breakdowns. For example, FMS erroneously excluded $40 

billion in payments related to 150 agency pay stations from its debt 

collection database for matching with outstanding taxes. Nine billion of this was paid to contractors with outstanding tax debt. And FMS paid $17 billion to contractors where Taxpayer Identification Numbers, or TINs, were not contained on agency payment 

files or were obviously invalid, and it paid another $4 billion where 

contractor names were not included on those pay files. Without a 

valid TIN and name to match against the tax debt, these payments 

could not be levied. 

While inaccurate and incomplete information provided by agencies contributed to some of these omissions, FMS, as the Nation’s 

debt collector, has a responsibility to actively identify and resolve 

issues that adversely impact the effectiveness of the levy program. 

FMS policy decisions have also led to at least tens of billions of dollars in additional disbursements to contractors being excluded from 

potential levy. 

Specifically, FMS uses several methods to disburse funds, but 

only payments made through one method are included in the levy 

program. FMS excluded the other payment methods because their 

inclusion would require system and process changes. However, 

FMS performed no study to determine whether the benefits from 

additional tax collections would outweigh the costs associated with 

such processing and system changes. This is like flying blind. The 

lack of proactive oversight and management of the program has resulted in the Federal Government forfeiting its ability to collect at 

least $50 million more in annual tax collections through the levy 

program. 

FMS faces other challenges. Increasingly, the government is 

using purchase cards to pay contractors, $10 billion in fiscal year 

2004. Because payments are made to the banks that issue the 

cards and not the contractors, the government doesn’t presently 

have a means to levy such payments. 

Additionally, FMS and IRS have yet to fully implement the 

American Jobs Creation Act provision that authorizes the government to levy up to 100 percent of contractor payments to collect 

outstanding tax debt. 

In conclusion, allowing contractors to do business with the government while not paying their taxes creates an unfair competitive 

advantage for them at the expense of the vast majority of Federal 

contractors that fulfill their tax obligations. The levy program has 

thus far failed to achieve its potential, primarily because substantial tax debt is excluded and because FMS, the Nation’s debt collector, has not exercised effective and proactive oversight and management of the program. As a result, the government has missed 

opportunities to collect substantial amounts of tax debt. 

We believe prompt implementation of the recommendations contained in our report released today will result in tens of millions 

of dollars in annual tax collections. 

17

Mr. Chairman, this concludes our statement. We would be 

pleased to answer any questions you or other Members of the Subcommittee may have. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, gentlemen, and again, we do appreciate the work that you have done. 

Mr. Sebastian, you indicated that Federal law doesn’t stop contractors from receiving contract payments even if they are not paying their Federal taxes. Should there be, in your opinion, or any 

of you, should there be a debarment option for egregious and repeated conduct for individuals? I think both of my colleagues talked 

about cases over, in one case, a 20-year period. Should there be a 

debarment, do you believe? I am going to ask the next panel the 

same question. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. Mr. Kutz and I actually testified on this issue a 

number of years ago. A bill was introduced that would have, in 

fact, barred such tax delinquents from entering into contracts, as 

well as receiving loans, grants, etc. The bill was actually voted out 

of the House Government Reform Committee and then languished, 

quite frankly. 

Certainly it is a policy option that the Congress could consider. 

I would caution you, as we have cautioned in the past, that there 

are a host of issues associated with implementing such a barring 

provision, including ensuring that the information related to tax 

delinquents is accurate and that the IRS would be able to respond 

to an inquiry within a matter of hours as opposed to the days or 

weeks that it would presently take. There are other issues with respect to the contracting community, trying to expedite the negotiation of contracts as quickly as possible. All of those would have to 

be considered. 

Mr. Kutz may be able to add more to that. 

Senator COLEMAN. Mr. Kutz. 

Mr. KUTZ. Well, I think it is the difference between a preventive 

and a detective control. The levy program is after the money has 

been stolen, basically, when it comes to payroll taxes, so you are 

trying to collect it after it is out the door, versus you are talking 

about more preventive controls. Once someone has stolen from us 

once, let us not do business with them, so it is a valid policy option. 

Senator COLEMAN. And I would be generous. Not once, five times, 

whatever it is. Chairman Collins raised that in her statement. It 

is one thing to act after the fact, but when you have patterns of 

abuse, not to have the ability to say, hey, this person is not a responsible contractor——

Mr. KUTZ. Right, and the patterns are years and decades in some 

cases. 

Senator COLEMAN. Let me ask, Commissioner Gregg from FMS, 

in his written statement, he says our effective management of the 

levy program is demonstrated by the fact that through the first 8 

months of this fiscal year, FMS has collected more taxes, $126 million on behalf of the IRS, than in any previous year. I don’t want 

to get agencies fighting with each other, but I would like an honest 

assessment. Do you feel that, as we sit here today, that FMS has 

had an effective levy management program? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. Let me take a shot at that, and then Mr. Kutz 

can add to it. I think the information contained in our report and 

18

1See Exhibit No. 1 which appears in the Appendix on page 96. 

included in our oral statement would indicate that we believe that 

FMS has exercised less than effective oversight and management 

of the program, as evidenced by such omissions as $40 billion in 

payments related to 150 agency pay stations. 

Senator COLEMAN. The chart on the board,1 one of the comments, 

I believe it was Mr. Sebastian, in your testimony, you talked about 

payments that are made that do not go through the Treasury Offset Program. In other words, as I understand it, what you have is 

FMS makes contractor payments. If they go through the Treasury 

Offset Program, they can be screened for levies, whether people 

have tax obligations. The money then can be levied, 15 percent to 

the IRS, and the system is working. 

But apparently there are a series of payments—Fedwire, purchase card, I believe you mentioned—that do not go through the 

Treasury Offset Program, that they go directly to the contractor, or 

in the purchase card, to the bank which then goes to the contractor. Can you explain to me why there isn’t a Treasury Offset 

Program for these kinds of payments and what it would take to 

have a levy in place? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. With respect to the first three on the chart, the 

Fedwire, the automated clearinghouse, CTX, and Type A payments, 

the issue really comes down to a couple of things, primarily, the 

structure of the payment files that are sent forward. They currently are not compatible with the setup within the TOP database 

to affect a matching. So that would require some programming 

changes. 

Senator COLEMAN. So I want to correct myself. There is not a 

legal impediment. There is not a statutory impediment. This is a 

program change that could correct the situation, is that fair? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. That is correct. The added complexity with respect to the Fedwire payments, of which there were over $190 billion disbursed in 2004, is that these are same-day payments. They 

are actually deposited into the payee’s account within the same 

day. They are high dollar value, low-volume payments. Of that 

$190 billion, neither we nor FMS were ever able to get a handle 

on how much of that represented payments to contractors. 

Senator COLEMAN. Again, what would it take to get a better 

sense of whether there are some levy obligations here? Are these 

programming changes? Are these software changes? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. Programming and processing changes within 

FMS. 

Senator COLEMAN. And I suspect there is a cost-benefit analysis 

that one has to do here to say, what is the cost of the change and 

what is the benefit? Have you been able to do a cost-benefit analysis, even in a cursory fashion, to determine whether, in fact, if we 

make some programmatic changes to ensure that these payments 

go through the levy program it will be worth the price or the cost 

of the software changes? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. We were able to come up with estimates of the 

amount of contractor payments that were being sent through the 

CTX and the Type A. It was about $26 billion in contractor payments. And when we matched those payments against the outVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:37 Dec 05, 2005 Jkt 022195 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\22195.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
19

standing tax debt within IRS, we were able to come up with some 

significant dollar values that will be added to the levy. That was 

actually a component of the $50 million that we computed FMS 

could collect above and beyond the $16 million it had collected. 

Senator COLEMAN. So again, in your judgment, there would be 

the cost-benefit analysis of what it would take to change the system versus the monies that would be collected, it would be the interest of the government to do the programmatic changes so that 

we could collect the levies and make sure a tax obligation is being 

taken care of, is that correct? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. There is clearly some benefit with respect to the 

additional revenue streams. What we don’t have is information on 

what it would actually cost to facilitate such programming and 

processing changes. 

Mr. KUTZ. One more thing I would add on the purchase card is 

that the payments to the banks actually would go through TOP, 

like Bank of America and CitiBank. But the payments to the contractors don’t. The banks actually make the payments to the contractors. 

Senator COLEMAN. Mr. Kutz, let me ask you, we talked about 

having 50 cases here which I know you have labeled abusive and 

criminal, willful failure to remit payroll taxes, a felony. We had 47 

cases, and I am going to ask the Commissioner about this when I 

have a chance to question him. Do we have a sense of whether 

there has been any criminal action or any criminal cases filed either in the 47 that you did with the Defense Department or even 

in these 50, any sense of whether that is being done? 

Mr. KUTZ. Yes. I will let Special Agent Ryan follow up, but we 

don’t see a lot of evidence that there has been any prosecutions or 

indictments at this point. There is some activity, but most of the 

activity seems to be recent. But it is interesting to look at some of 

the information we got back about some of the contractors that said 

that they were defunct or bankrupt. I think that kind of misses the 

point here in that the actual owners are the ones we are going 

after. 

So to the extent that there is a shell company—if we had stopped 

our investigation when we saw that there was a defunct company, 

we would have missed a lot of what we were reporting to you 

today. So there is something behind the defunct companies, because someone steals the money, shuts down the company, and 

moves on. 

Senator COLEMAN. And they are able to restart another company 

and do business with the government, aren’t they? 

Mr. KUTZ. Absolutely. 

Senator COLEMAN. I mean, that is one of the frustrations that we 

have here. Agent Ryan. 

Mr. RYAN. I would just like to add, Senator, that in the cases 

that we looked at, of the 47 in the first report, shortly after your 

hearing, the IRS did come over. They did review our work papers 

and indicated that there were 10, 12, or 14 cases that needed further investigation. 

After that, we really didn’t hear from them until about 2 months 

ago, when this hearing was announced, that we started to get some 

inquiry from the field from the agents that had the cases assigned 

20

to them. I don’t believe that there was any action taken because 

the agents were never contacted by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, our 

work papers were never requested under discovery, and there were 

no subpoenas issued for potential witnesses. 

So with that, we are here today, like Mr. Kutz just said. I don’t 

believe that at this stage of the game there has been a lot of action 

on those cases. 

Senator COLEMAN. I understand the sense that we should be 

looking at administrative remedies before criminal remedies. I was 

a prosecutor for many years, and if we can settle something, you 

don’t have to file criminal charges. 

My concern is that in cases of clearly the most willful, the most 

abusive cases, if you don’t use that authority, I think it sends the 

wrong signal. Again, if we could clearly identify cases of repetitive 

conduct, of clear fraud, of money going into personal pockets at the 

expense of both the employee and the government. So that is the 

frustration I have with what I am seeing and the lack of action 

that we are seeing in regard to these cases. 

Mr. KUTZ. We concur. Certainly, we would believe that some 

prosecutions, possibly high-profile ones, in some of these cases 

would send a message out to people that this is not proper behavior. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you. Senator Levin. 

Senator LEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to go through the process a little bit with you. The IRS 

sends to FMS the list of people or companies that owe taxes, and 

that is done on a regular basis, I believe? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. Weekly. 

Senator LEVIN. Weekly. So FMS knows the names of companies 

that owe the government taxes. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. It has a control name sent over by the IRS along 

with the Taxpayer Identification Numbers, four characters, alpha 

characters. 

Senator LEVIN. It just has the four? OK. That list, then, when 

an agency enters into a contract, presumably could be compared by 

the FMS with the contract if they had that four-digit identifier, is 

that correct? FMS could make that match before any payments are 

sent out to a contractor. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. If they had a listing of prospective contractors or 

contractors with that information. 

Senator LEVIN. Either one. If they got a list from an agency, we 

are about to enter into contracts with these 50 people. Are any of 

those on your list, FMS? Could FMS tell the agency—are they allowed under current law—there is a notice of tax delinquency that 

has been sent, or they owe back taxes? Is that permitted under current law? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. Presently, I do not believe so. 

Senator LEVIN. Is there any reason why we shouldn’t amend the 

law so that the FMS can be informed by the IRS of the list that 

was sent to them of contracts about to be entered into that X number are on the IRS delinquency list? Is there any reason that you 

can think of why we shouldn’t allow FMS to be given that information by IRS? 

21

Mr. SEBASTIAN. It is certainly a valid policy option for you all to 

consider. 

Senator LEVIN. We will ask IRS as to whether they would have 

a problem with that. 

So now you have a situation where payments are about to be 

sent out by the FMS to presumably either a company or a bank 

which is going to send money to that company. At that point, they 

make a match. For reasons I don’t understand, the current law 

doesn’t allow them to make the match before the contract is entered into, but we will go there with the next panel. 

Now you have payments going out. A significant number of those 

payments go to people who owe money on their taxes because the 

FMS doesn’t have the TIN number, is that correct? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. That is correct. 

Senator LEVIN. And that is a decision which FMS has made, 

right? I mean, they get a form from an agency. If it doesn’t have 

the number on it, they could tell the agency, you give us that number. They could do that under current law, right? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. Yes, they could. In fact, agencies are required 

under law to provide TINs. 

Senator LEVIN. But they don’t do it at times, right? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. That is correct. 

Senator LEVIN. And the FMS up until now has not said, you give 

us a completed form or we are not going to pursue it. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. That is correct. They have not rejected payment 

requests for that reason. 

Senator LEVIN. That seems to me to be a fairly simple step. Otherwise, there is not going to be a match made in a lot of cases, because there is no number to match. The TIN number isn’t on the 

form for the payment. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. Now, there are some exceptions with respect to 

the TIN requirement. For example, payments to a foreign company 

being made by a Federal agency would be exempt. But what would 

be required is a certification of those exempted entities from the 

TIN requirement. 

Senator LEVIN. There could be a note made of that. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. That is correct. 

Senator LEVIN. Now you have also got a situation—and sometimes these forms come in with no name of the contractor on it, either, is that correct? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. That is correct. 

Senator LEVIN. And FMS has the power under current law to reject the form from the agency. You give us a complete form, TIN 

number, name, or else we are not going to accept it. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. I am not aware of anything in law that would 

preclude them from doing that. 

Senator LEVIN. All right. Now, we also allow under current law 

the payments to be made to a bank, in effect, instead of directly 

to the contractor, is that correct? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. That is correct. 

Senator LEVIN. Is there any reason that you know of that we 

couldn’t say that payments—assuming we can get the list from the 

IRS to the FMS of folks that are in arrears on taxes—that you cannot have that indirect payment made? You must, if you are on a 

22

delinquent list, have that payment go directly to you. The computer 

will not accept a check going to a bank, or a wire transfer, or use 

of another credit card, in effect, if that delinquent company is on 

the delinquency list. Is there any reason why we can’t provide for 

that? 

Mr. KUTZ. I would say the purchase—if you are talking about the 

purchase card——

Senator LEVIN. Both. 

Mr. KUTZ [continuing]. That is a little harder problem because 

the banks are involved and it is merchant banks and so it is a little 

more complex situation, which I think they have just begun to look 

at. So they may have looked at it before, but that is a harder one 

to do than the FMS process you have just described. 

Senator LEVIN. Well, explain to me why, if FMS has a list of 

companies that are deliquent—the law changes, and the IRS can 

give them the list of companies that are delinquent in their taxes—

we couldn’t simply say to the computer, you cannot send a payment 

owing by the government to that contractor that is on that list unless it is made directly to the contractor, which then means we can 

hold off the 15 percent or more for back taxes. 

Mr. KUTZ. I believe you would have to share that information 

with the banks that are making the payments to the contractors 

in that case. 

Senator LEVIN. You would have to share the——

Mr. KUTZ. The information on tax problems with the actual bank 

who is making the payment to the contractor, because the contractor gets paid in a matter of days——

Senator LEVIN. No, but I am not even allowing the payment to 

go to the bank. I am stopping the payment from going to the bank 

if there is a contractor that owes money. 

Mr. KUTZ. It is just like your credit card, though. There is maybe 

a thousand vendors on one credit card bill. So if you stop the payment, you would be stopping the payments to everyone, not just 

the one. What happens—it is just like your credit card. 

Senator LEVIN. Isn’t it FMS that is making the payment to the 

bank? 

Mr. KUTZ. Yes. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. Correct. 

Senator LEVIN. On a contract. 

Mr. KUTZ. Well, on a purchase card which is—again, it is just 

like your credit card statement. You might get a bill with 200 

charges on it that are going to go to contractors, so the bank is 

making the payment to the contractors. 

Senator LEVIN. I am missing something here, though, and I want 

to try to understand it. If a contractor is saying, send the payment 

owing me to a bank, that has to happen, right? Instead of sending 

it to me, send it to a bank. Apply it to a purchase card. 

Mr. KUTZ. Yes. The bank gets paid and the bank pays the contractor, correct. 

Senator LEVIN. But that is at the request of the contractor, is it 

not? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. I think what you may be referring to is actually 

preventing a vendor with delinquent taxes from being able to get 

payment through a purchase card——

23

Senator LEVIN. Exactly. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN [continuing]. Stopping it before they actually get 

the purchase card. 

Senator LEVIN. Right. You just say that the vendor is on that 

list, which should exist, that FMS has of delinquent vendors, that 

payment can not go in directly. It cannot go to a bank. It must go 

directly to the vendor and then it is subject to the 15 percent. 

Mr. KUTZ. It would seem possibly that the other agencies might 

need to be involved so that they would deny those contractors from 

using the purchase card, from being paid through a purchase card. 

Senator LEVIN. My time is up. There is a contractor out there, 

right? 

Mr. KUTZ. Yes. 

Senator LEVIN. The money is owed that contractor. 

Mr. KUTZ. Yes. 

Senator LEVIN. And the contractor must say, don’t send it to me. 

Apply it to a purchase card. Isn’t that what happens? Isn’t that the 

decision of the contractor? 

Mr. RYAN. Senator, I think we are talking about apples and oranges here. I understand what you are saying. That would be more 

in line with using the card as a payment method in regard to a 

contract that is set up, as Senator Collins and Senator Coleman 

mentioned earlier, about identifying a contractor in the early 

stages before the contract is awarded. When the credit card is 

being used as a payment method, there can be a hold put on those 

payments. 

Senator LEVIN. That is what I am saying. 

Mr. RYAN. And there is also another method——

Senator LEVIN. Albeit it at a slightly later stage. Their question 

was, why even issue the contract, which is a perfectly important 

question as far as I am concerned. But I am saying, after a contract 

has been issued, if that person is on the list that FMS has of delinquent contractors, why then can we not tell the computer—you 

may not apply the payment owing the contractor to the purchase 

card. You must send it directly to the contractor. We are not going 

to accept that request to send it to the bank. 

Mr. RYAN. I think that is an issue that is probably going to be 

addressed later on in regards to what you are talking about. But 

there is also another system called Power Track that is being used 

in the government in which there is a certain financial institution 

that is hired to handle the payment process. When receipt and acceptance comes in to pay on these bills, they would absolutely have 

the ability under your scenario to know who that contractor is before they would make the payment to that contractor. So the intermediary would be whoever the government would contract to handle that payment. 

Senator LEVIN. I don’t know why FMS can’t simply notify its 

computer that we have a list from IRS. These are the delinquent 

companies. You do not send a check to anybody except that company. It doesn’t get wire transferred. It doesn’t go through a credit 

card. It has to go to that company, and then that is subject to the 

withholding for back taxes. I don’t know why the FMS can’t get 

that list from IRS and then cannot tell its computer, only direct 

payments subject to withholding for back taxes. 

24

That is my question. I am not, perhaps too obviously, a high-tech 

guy, but I will see if my staff can explain this to me. 

Senator COLEMAN. Chairman Collins. 

Chairman COLLINS. I guess I shouldn’t send you a Blackberry 

message? [Laughter.] 

Mr. Kutz, I want to go back to the issue that I raised in my opening statement. We have talked about some important reforms that 

would help with this unacceptable situation. One is improving the 

levy system. The second one is to strengthen the Federal Acquisition Regulations to allow firms engaged in tax evasion to be 

debarred. That has been, I am told, a recommendation of the joint 

task force. 

But I am still fixated on what we could do on the front end to 

prevent businesses or individuals with serious tax delinquencies 

from receiving Federal contracts in the first place. It is fine to have 

systems to take care of those who slip through the cracks and get 

contracts despite evading taxes, but we really ought to have a system that allows us to screen out potential contractors who have serious tax delinquencies. Do you have any recommendations in that 

regard? 

Mr. KUTZ. That was what Mr. Sebastian mentioned earlier with 

the legislation from 2000 on the House side that would have barred 

contractors from doing business, and the process would have been 

the contracting officers would have checked with the IRS to determine whether a company had severe tax delinquencies, and if they 

did, that would have barred them from getting that contract. And 

that was—the procurement community at that point in time fought 

that legislation with the streamlined acquisition problems. They 

didn’t want to have contracting officers spending their time looking 

to see what kind of people we were doing business with, quite honestly. 

Chairman COLLINS. I remember that bill being mentioned in testimony last year when I brought up this same frustration that I 

have. But are there technical reasons why that couldn’t be done? 

Would it slow the procurement process in a way that would be unacceptable, or do you see that as a practical way for the contracting 

official to do a check with IRS? Is this a practical solution? 

Mr. KUTZ. With respect to IRS, and the Commissioner can probably talk about that further. There are a couple of issues: The timeliness of the response of IRS back to the contracting officers, and, 

of course, the issue of accuracy. We don’t want to prevent taxpaying contractors from doing business with the government. So we 

were concerned when we testified on that legislation in 2000 of 

timeliness and accuracy of data, and so with tax system modernization, I think that would be a question for the Commissioner. But 

aside from those things, it is an absolutely valid policy option. I 

think it is much easier to explain to the American taxpayer something like that than just relying on this levy program after they 

have already stolen the money. 

Chairman COLLINS. I certainly agree. You have done work now 

looking at delinquent contractors in the area of defense contracts 

and now civilian agency contracts. Have you come across any evidence that contractors who are evading tax obligations are receiving Federal grants? 

25

Mr. KUTZ. Yes. Several of our case studies were receiving Federal 

grants, which is another outrageous situation, that sometimes the 

grants were larger than the amount of taxes that they owed and 

there was nothing done about that. Special Agent Ryan can add 

further to the two cases, I believe. 

Chairman COLLINS. Mr. Ryan. 

Mr. RYAN. Senator, in the cases that we investigated, we found 

out that after we conducted the interviews that the corporations 

did, in fact, receive grants. Some of the grants were from the Department of Energy, and as Mr. Kutz said, the grants were larger 

than the taxes that were owed. And I am not quite sure, but I don’t 

think that the grants were ever levied. 

Mr. KUTZ. And I believe the other one was with the Department 

of Homeland Security. 

Chairman COLLINS. That was going to be my next question, because you mentioned in your testimony that you had looked at the 

Department of Homeland Security. The Chairman mentioned the 

case of security guards being provided by a contractor with a serious tax problem. Are you finding even examples of contractors who 

have committed crimes of integrity, such as embezzlement, who are 

doing business with sensitive agencies like the Department of 

Homeland Security? I know you found that with some defense contractors from your last study. 

Mr. KUTZ. Yes, and I think three of our 50 had been convicted 

of those types of crimes and had those types of issues in their background. Also, drug issues were involved with some of these folks. 

So certainly, it is a bit disturbing to see that the people who we 

are talking about today are guarding our Federal buildings, and if 

we can’t trust them again to pay their taxes, it is very difficult to 

explain how we can trust them to guard our buildings. How do we 

know if we are dealing with who we think we are dealing with? 

So that gets back to the front-end controls you are talking about, 

trying to determine who we are doing business with before we let 

a contract. 

Chairman COLLINS. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that this is 

a whole new area that we should look into because it is outrageous 

that a contractor is receiving contracts if there is a serious tax delinquency. But if they are receiving grants, in some ways, I think 

that is even worse and we need to do some further work in this 

area. 

I want to switch to another issue that troubles me greatly and 

that is the competitiveness of a contractor who isn’t paying his 

taxes, who may even be withholding his employees’ payroll taxes. 

Doesn’t that business have a competitive advantage in competing 

for a contract? He may well be able to offer a better price because 

he is cheating on his taxes. 

Mr. KUTZ. That is absolutely true, yes. When you think about 

wage-based industries, which is most of what we looked at here, it 

is a 15.3 percent advantage on the wage base. In addition to that, 

we identified many of the contractors, as some of you have mentioned, that owed corporate taxes. And so if you are not paying 

your corporate taxes, you are not paying your payroll taxes, and 

then we had a number of the officers and owners who had hundreds of thousands of dollars of individual income taxes that they 

26

owed. So this all presents a very unfair situation for the vast majority, as Mr. Sebastian said, of government contractors who do pay 

their taxes. 

Chairman COLLINS. This is not only unfair to the taxpayers, it 

is unfair to the legitimate businesses who are trying to compete for 

Federal contracts. 

Just one final quick question. In testimony submitted for the 

record, Mr. Everson has indicated that the administration is proposing to incentivize FMS to levy payments by allowing them to 

keep part of the levied funds. It strikes me as an odd situation to 

have to provide an incentive to FMS to do what it is designed to 

do, but maybe I am missing something. Mr. Sebastian, what is 

your view on that? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. I guess my only reaction to that is with respect 

to the levying of payments or offsetting of payments for non-tax 

debt, it is my understanding that FMS does, in fact, get a small 

user fee related to any collections coming out of that process. So 

it is not unique in terms of the services FMS has provided to other 

agencies for non-tax debt. 

Chairman COLLINS. Mr. Kutz, do you have a comment on expanding that? 

Mr. KUTZ. Well, they are the Nation’s tax debt collector and 

other debt collector, so it is part of their responsibilities. I would 

say anything that can help make this better, I would support certainly, and if it takes that—I am not sure it should need that, but 

if, in fact, something like that helps better incentivize the system 

so that you can collect tens and hundreds of millions of dollars 

more, we are looking for results either way. 

Chairman COLLINS. I must say that it seems odd to me to give 

an incentive to FMS when their job is to levy such payments. But 

perhaps the system is so broken that we need to consider that. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Senator Collins. Senator Akaka. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Kutz, in your written testimony, you testified that FMS has 

not taken proactive action to notify States that they can enter into 

reciprocal agreements with the Federal Government to collect each 

other’s debts through offsetting contractor payments. How does 

that fit into your overall findings related to FMS’s overall management and oversight of the Federal Payment Levy Program and 

would pursuing reciprocal agreements with the States be beneficial 

to both them and the Federal Government? 

Mr. KUTZ. Yes, I believe it is consistent with our finding of ineffective management oversight and control, and you see the 

posterboard Senator Coleman had up there and you could just add 

that as another example of FMS not being proactive in their approach here, and certainly evidence to other programs that have 

been—agreements with States have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of collections. So it would seem that there is a mutually beneficial situation here for the Federal Government and 

States to pursue this alternative. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you. Mr. Kutz, you have testified that civilian contractors owe billions of dollars in unpaid taxes. Some of 

this amount is not available for matching in the TOP database for 

27

various reasons, including legal restrictions or policy decisions. 

Other debt is not matched against Federal contractor payments in 

the TOP database because of various issues relating to the quality 

of the payment records. Some of these limitations are outside of 

FMS’s direct span of control. 

My question to you is what specific improvements could FMS 

make to the levy program without additional legal authority to increase collections? 

Mr. KUTZ. I would just say, overall, most of this is a management 

issue from the FMS side that would not require much more legislation. It really is a management issue. I would let Mr. Sebastian expand on that. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. I think Mr. Kutz is absolutely correct. The $50 

million in additional tax collections that we identified, and recognize that would not be complete because of our own limitations 

with respect to data, is all within the power of the FMS to change 

without any legal modifications. 

With respect to the extensive tax debt that does not go over to 

the TOP program, as we pointed out in our written statement, a 

good percentage of that, about $71 billion, currently is legally restricted from going forward to the TOP program. Bankruptcy is one 

scenario. Another scenario would be where the IRS has not completed the process of notifying the taxpayer with respect to the 

amount due and giving that taxpayer the opportunity to appeal the 

tax debt. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Sebastian, during the review, your team discovered that most of the payment files from the State Department 

did not have valid contractor names. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. That is correct. 

Senator AKAKA. In fact, over $3.8 billion in contractor payment 

files that you found which did not have valid contractor names, of 

that $3.2 billion was from the State Department alone. 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. Yes. 

Senator AKAKA. How difficult was it for your team to find this 

error and how hard was it for the problem to be fixed? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. Unfortunately, a cursory review of that file disclosed the fact that there were no names included. So it did not 

take sophisticated techniques to identify that problem. 

We notified FMS as well as the State Department of the issue. 

The State Department was able to ascertain that they had incorrectly been providing the wrong field on their payment file that 

was going forward to FMS, and they had actually been doing this 

since the 1980’s. They were able to effect a change almost immediately. So those payments should now be coming forward with contractor names and will be subject to levy. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Sebastian, as noted in the GAO testimony, 

there are various reasons that prevent a match in TOP between a 

tax debt and a payment. One such reason is an invalid agency location code. Your team found that $40 billion of last year’s contractor 

payments were not even sent to TOP for potential matching 

against debt because FMS does not have a current agency location 

code list in TOP. 

Is it true that FMS has a list of invalid agency location codes in 

its disbursement system, and if so, what would it take for FMS to 

28

update the TOP database? Do you know if FMS has, in fact, updated the list after GAO told them about this problem? 

Mr. SEBASTIAN. I think part of the issue goes back to the fact 

that when the Treasury Offset Program and then the Federal Payment Levy Program were developed, in designing the TOP database, at that point in time, FMS put together a complete inventory 

of all agency location codes. Those codes were then loaded within 

the TOP database to effect a match. 

The problem was that there was no consistent oversight where 

when new agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, 

came into being that generated additional agency locations or paying stations, the agency location codes associated with those were 

entered into TOP. It would be a fairly simple process to update 

that and then continuously monitor it as new agency paying stations cropped up. 

My understanding is that FMS is in the process of developing 

some appropriate oversight for that to make sure that the inventory is maintained. I don’t know whether they have updated TOP 

for all of the 150 paying location codes we identified. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thanks, Senator Akaka. 

Senator Levin, I know you have to leave, but I want to defer to 

you if you have any follow-up questions you want to ask. 

Senator LEVIN. I just had one additional question. I have a lot, 

but one I am going to ask the panel. Is there any reason why we 

should not require people who are getting Federal contracts to represent on their contract which they sign that there are no outstanding tax delinquency notices against them, or if there are, to 

list them, to make a representation to the government which would 

then, if false, be the basis of action against them under the criminal code? Is there any reason why we shouldn’t put that right in 

the contract? 

Mr. KUTZ. I am not aware of any. 

Senator LEVIN. Is it in the contract, as far as you know, right 

now? 

Mr. KUTZ. Not that we are aware of. 

Senator LEVIN. I think that would be a fairly simple step to take. 

That becomes a criminal misrepresentation. I am not saying that 

they don’t owe taxes. I mean, people can owe taxes and they can 

be in dispute or they can owe taxes which are not in dispute. It 

is not a crime to owe taxes. It is a crime to owe trust fund taxes, 

payroll taxes. 

Mr. KUTZ. Right. 

Senator LEVIN. That is a crime. But it is not a crime to owe taxes 

to the Federal Government. But it is a crime to misrepresent to get 

a contract whether you owe taxes. It seems to me that would be 

a fairly effective mechanism to get some of this money that is 

owing to us. Thank you. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Senator Levin. 

If there are no follow-up questions, I will excuse this panel. 

Thank you, gentlemen, for your outstanding work. 

We will now call the second panel. I would like to welcome our 

final panel of witnesses for this morning’s important hearing. We 

have with us the Hon. Mark Everson, Commissioner of the Internal 

29

Revenue Service, and Richard Gregg, the Commissioner of the 

Treasury Department’s Financial Management Service. 

Mr. Everson, it is good to see you again. We always appreciate 

you coming before this Committee and appreciate the cooperation 

we have been getting from the Internal Revenue Service on the investigative matters we have pursued. As you remember, in February 2004, you testified before the Subcommittee regarding IRS’s 

plans to make $28 billion in additional tax debt available to the 

Federal Payment Levy Program. I look forward to hearing the results of this action as well as the status and results from implementing the Federal Contractor Tax Compliance Task Force recommendations, which I commented on in my opening statement 

and have been very appreciative of the work that has been done 

there. I would also be interested in knowing of any further action 

that IRS can take to improve the effectiveness of the Federal Payment Levy Program. 

Mr. Gregg, I also want to welcome you back and look forward to 

hearing how you will work with us to identify the problems identified by the GAO in their latest report on tax delinquent civilian 

contractors and Federal-State reciprocal tax collection efforts. 

I also want to thank you both for your participation in the Federal Contractor Tax Compliance Task Force. The continuing success of that effort would not have been possible without your personal involvement and commitment. While I recognize that a task 

force is a team effort, there are members who provide vision and 

direction to the effort. In that respect, I would also like to recognize 

Pam Watson, Fred Schindler, and Julie Schwartz of the IRS, Dean 

Balamaci and Paul McVicker of the FMS, Lisa Romney, Matt 

McGinnis, and Martha Stearns of the Department of Defense for 

their exceptional dedication to achieving the goals of that task 

force. 

Again, I sincerely thank both of you for being with us at this 

morning’s hearing. As you are aware, all witnesses, pursuant to 

Rule 6, are required to be sworn before the Subcommittee. At this 

point, I ask you to raise your right hand and ask, do you swear 

that the testimony you will give before the Subcommittee is the 

truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, 

God? 

Mr. EVERSON. I do. 

Mr. GREGG. I do. 

Senator COLEMAN. You again are familiar with the timing system here. When the green light turns to amber, you have about a 

minute to sum up and your entire written statement will appear 

in the record in its entirety. I would ask that you limit your testimony to no more than 10 minutes and we will do 10-minute rounds 

for the panel. 

Commissioner Everson, you will go first, followed by Commissioner Gregg. After you have given your testimony, we will turn to 

questions. Commissioner Everson. 

30

1The prepared statement of Mr. Everson with attachments appears in the appendix on page 

76. 2The charts referred to are attached to IRS Commissioner Everson’s prepared statement 

which appears in the Appendix on page 87. 3The chart referred to appears in the Appendix on page 88. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. MARK W. EVERSON,1 COMMISSIONER, INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE 

TREASURY 

Mr. EVERSON. Mr. Chairman, Senator Akaka, thank you for inviting me here today. First, let me say that I appreciate your 

strong support for strengthening the integrity of the Nation’s tax 

system through enhanced enforcement activities. This Subcommittee has done important investigative and oversight work in 

a number of areas, particularly abusive tax shelters. And I thank 

you for the support you have offered for the Administration’s budget request for IRS enforcement activities. 

As to today’s subject, I welcome your continued interest in tax 

compliance by Federal contractors. Vigorous enforcement of the tax 

law will help reduce the tax gap. Earlier this year, we announced 

that the gross tax gap, the difference between what taxpayers 

should pay and what they actually pay on a timely basis, exceeds 

$300 billion per year. Even after IRS enforcement recoveries and 

late payments, the tax gap is over a quarter-trillion dollars per 

year. That is inexcusable. 

Average Americans pay their taxes honestly and accurately. 

They have every right to be confident that when they do so, neighbors and competitors are doing the same. To bolster public confidence in the tax system, the IRS has ramped up its audits of individuals, particularly high-income taxpayers and corporations. As 

you know, we are focusing more on abusive shelters and conducting 

more criminal investigations. We have collected over $3.7 billion in 

the settlement initiative for Son of Boss, a particularly egregious 

shelter of which this Subcommittee is well aware. 

To frame the discussion of tax collections from Federal contractors, let me share with you two charts.2 The first shows our overall 

enforcement revenues. Enforcement revenues are the direct revenues the IRS gets from collection, audit, and document matching 

programs. We are doing better, as you can see, up to $43 billion 

last year. 

The biggest piece of enforcement revenues comes from collections. 

Levies are an important component of our collection program. This 

second chart traces the number of levies we have made over the 

same period.3 You can see how they disastrously decreased after 

enactment of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998. They 

are now up considerably, but still well below historic levels. 

As part of our broader collection efforts, we are particularly cognizant of the need to ensure tax compliance by Federal contractors. 

Simply stated, if someone wants to do business with the government, the people can and should demand that vendors are current 

with their Federal tax obligations. 

Since your hearing 16 months ago, we have taken a number of 

steps to assure monies owed are paid. Results are promising. 

Frankly, I think that the Subcommittee can take much of the credVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:37 Dec 05, 2005 Jkt 022195 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\22195.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
31

it for this progress, and I want you to know that we expect continued improvements in the future. 

When I appeared before this Subcommittee in February last 

year, I spoke about the establishment of a joint task force that you 

have mentioned. In March 2004, the IRS, FMS, and DOD established the Federal Contractor Tax Compliance Task Force. The new 

task force also includes representatives from GSA, OMB, and Justice. The task force has implemented several actions to ensure that 

Federal contractors pay their taxes and that we take appropriate 

enforcement actions, including levies, to collect unpaid taxes. 

We have both increased the pool of debt subject to levy and improved our collection procedures. Compared to January 2004, an 

additional $28 billion of tax is now subject to levy. We have improved and accelerated the collection process by increasing the frequency of matching activities. We have taken steps to streamline 

our notice process to ensure that all notice requirements, including 

due process notices, are met earlier in the collection process. 

The IRS and the Defense Department are working to implement 

a system to verify the name and Taxpayer Identification Number 

of each new potential contractor prior to contract award. Accurate 

records will ensure that delinquent contractors are identified and 

a portion of any vendor payment is levied and applied to the tax 

debt. 

As a result of these improvements, total collections through the Federal Payment Levy Program surpassed $126 million through 

May of this fiscal year. This is the whole program, which includes 

not just contractors. But you can see, this is the last 2 years. I 

guess that program sort of fell off the tracks. [Laughter.] 

This last piece here, this is just through 8 months only. So already we have surpassed—this is the contractor piece. This is the 

whole program, including Federal contractors and everybody. The 

difference between this and what we are talking about here is a lot 

of levies that come off of Social Security checks basically. So that 

is up already compared to a year ago. That is the overall program 

that is speeding collections. 

Now let us go to the contractors themselves. This is just what we 

are talking about today, the Federal contractors, DOD and civilian 

contractors are both in these numbers. Same thing, this shows that 

collections are dramatically up, and already in 8 months we surpassed what we did in the whole fiscal year. 

You have suggested that the task force expand its mission to include civilian contractors as well as those used by DOD. We will 

do this. I have also charged the task force with reviewing all remaining operational exclusions from the levy program in hopes of 

further increasing the number of debts available for levy. The task 

force will take up the challenges identified in the GAO report. 

While we continue to vigorously attack non-compliance by contractors, I want to emphasize as I did last year that protecting taxpayer rights is a cornerstone of our collection process, even when 

it means collection action is delayed. Consideration for taxpayer 

rights must be balanced with our desire that Federal contractors 

pay their taxes. Thank you. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Commissioner Everson. 

Commissioner Gregg. 

32

1The prepared statement of Mr. Gregg appears in the appendix on page 91. 

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD L. GREGG,1 COMMISSIONER, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY 

Mr. GREGG. Chairman Coleman, Members of the Subcommittee, 

I welcome the opportunity to discuss the role of the Financial Management Service in the collection of delinquent Federal tax debt 

owed by Federal contractors conducting business with civilian 

agencies. 

Mr. Chairman, I believe that FMS has a track record that clearly 

demonstrates excellent leadership and program management with 

respect to the governmentwide collection of debts, both non-tax and 

tax. Since the inception of the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 

1996, FMS has collected $24 billion in delinquent debts that would 

otherwise have not been recovered. More importantly, for the past 

several years virtually every trend line shows increases in collections with more than $400 million collected in the tax levy program 

alone. 

Our effective management of the levy program is demonstrated 

by the fact that through the first 8 months of the fiscal year FMS 

has collected more tax debts, $126 million, on behalf of IRS than 

in any previous fiscal year. Of key interest to this Subcommittee, 

the collection of tax debts by levying vendor payments has increased to $26 million in the first 8 months in fiscal year 2005 compared to $20.8 million in all of fiscal year 2004. 

We will continue to make improvements in fulfilling our responsibilities, recognizing that managing any program involves making 

choices and setting priorities. FMS has made such choices in managing our limited, but nonetheless important, tax levy program. We 

have allocated resources to the highest management priorities to 

maximize collection and ensure that proper management controls 

are in place. The growth of the debt collection program in general 

and the tax levy program in particular is a result of setting plans 

and priorities and then maintaining the focus and discipline to execute them. 

In my statement this morning I will use my time to discuss the 

actions FMS is taking in response to four key recommendations by 

the Government Accountability Office regarding the tax levy program and its use in the collection of tax debt owed by civilian contractors. 

The first one is the taxpayer identification number and names. 

GAO has recommended that FMS reject payment requests that do 

not contain the information necessary to carry out the levy program. Such action on the part of FMS has great potential to interfere with the timely disbursement of Federal funds to contractors 

who do not owe delinquent taxes. Even more importantly, it would 

blur important legal authorities and responsibilities. 

As the Federal Government’s chief disbursing office, FMS ensures that certified payments submitted to FMS are disbursed in 

a timely and an accurate manner. The certifying officials at Federal program agencies are responsible for ensuring the accuracy 

and validity of the payment information, such as name, TIN, and 

payment type, and for ensuring that the payment is legally authorVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:37 Dec 05, 2005 Jkt 022195 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\22195.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
33

1See Exhibit No. 3, Federal Contractor Tax Compliance Task Force Report, which appears in 

the Appendix on page 186. 

ized. Federal law provides that the certifying official is responsible 

for the information contained on a certified voucher. Putting FMS 

in a position of picking and choosing which payments to disburse 

would, I believe, blur the critical distinction between the agency’s 

certification authority and FMS disbursement authority. 

I believe a better approach is to step up our efforts to monitor 

and ensure agency compliance. A major step forward relates to the 

recommendation by the Federal Contractor Tax Compliance Task 

Force.1 In October, a program was implemented whereby as part 

of the contractor registration process a registering contractor’s TIN 

number will be validated. If the TIN cannot be validated, with very 

few exceptions, the contractor will not be eligible to conduct business with DOD or any Federal agency. 

As part of the stepped-up efforts, FMS has also been sending out 

reports on a monthly basis to all CFOs providing updates on their 

agency TIN, name, and payment type compliance. We will work 

closely with those agencies whose payment requests continue to 

contain incomplete information. This will also help compliance. 

In addition, FMS is working with the Federal Credit Council, a 

group of top executives of creditor agencies and the council’s debt 

collection subcommittee regarding TIN, name and payment type 

compliance. We will evaluate this multifaceted approach after one 

year and determine at the time whether withholding payments 

should be reconsidered. 

GAO has recommended that FMS develop and implement procedures to include Type A, automated clearinghouse corporate tax exchange—that is ACH–CTX—and Fedwire payments in the levy 

process. FMS fully agrees with the goal of including all eligible contractor payments and I would like to update you on the actions 

taken to levy Type A payments and our plans to address ACH–CTX 

and Fedwire payments. 

Type A payments are often unanticipated and typically made by 

agencies that do not have the payment volume to support sending 

large-scale bulk payment files. Disaster relief payments are an example of Type A payments. FMS is currently implementing system 

changes that will allow us to begin levying these payments later 

this year and we expect to be fully operational next year. 

The Fedwire payment system is used for low volume, high dollar 

transactions that are deposited into a recipient’s bank account on 

the same business day. This same-day payment requirement for 

Fedwire is in contrast to our normal electronic and check payments 

where FMS has more time to match the payment file against our 

debtor database. Because of Fedwire’s same-day payment requirement, operational and program changes to include these payments 

in the levy process will be extremely difficult and would increase 

the risk of erroneous payments. 

While the dollar value of the payments that run through Fedwire 

is large, Federal agencies have advised us that only a small percentage of these payments are disbursed to Federal contractors. In 

the last several weeks, FMS has begun to work with agencies to 

identify more precisely the payments in the Fedwire portfolio. In 

34

the near future, FMS will make payment changes which will require agencies to identify in all instances the type of payments 

being made through Fedwire. 

In addition, we are developing new guidelines for all Federal 

agencies to submit contractor payment requests to payment systems that can be levied. We will notify agencies about these new 

guidelines in the next monthly letter to agency CFOs. 

Our approach should help to minimize the number of contractor 

payments going through Fedwire, but it does not resolve the larger 

issue of whether FMS’s overall debt collection program can offset 

or levy the remaining Fedwire payments. Within the next year we 

will conduct an analysis of the payments going through Fedwire, 

the potential delinquent debt that could be collected if we are able 

to offset or levy those payments, and the determination of whether 

the additional amount of debts that could be collected warrant the 

program changes that would be needed to the Fedwire application. 

The ACH–CTX payments are used for multiple payments to the 

same payee or one payment with multiple invoices, and allow for 

transmitting with the payment complete remittance information. 

While this system is an appropriate and cost-effective way for 

agencies to make vendor payments, given the relatively small volume of payments going through ACH–CTX, the complexity of the 

payment file, and FMS’s need to set priorities, we have not yet decided how to levy these payments. We will conduct an analysis of 

the ACH–CTX payments to determine the feasibility and the potential benefits of modifying the system. 

The purchase card program. I would like to address the matter 

of the collection of unpaid taxes of contractors that are paid using 

purchase cards. Simply stated, the purchase cards model does not 

fit the Federal payment levy process. When FMS is in receipt of a 

levy from IRS our legal obligation is to surrender any property in 

our possession that is subject to levy. When a purchase is made 

using a purchase card, however, FMS never has in its possession 

property belonging to the vendor. Credit card payments to vendors 

are not processed through FMS or any other authorized disbursing 

official. 

Mr. Chairman, FMS agrees with GAO recommendations that a 

thorough review of the purchase card program geared toward exploring options for incorporating the collection of both tax and nontax debt is warranted. However, since the purchase card program 

is not an FMS program and we do not disburse purchase card payments to vendors or have information regarding what vendors receive credit card payments, FMS is not the proper government 

agency to lead this review. Government credit card programs are 

under the authority of the General Services Administration and we 

believe that working with GSA and IRS we can further explore the 

options. 

The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 enacted last October authorized IRS to levy up to 100 percent of certain vendor payments. 

FMS modified its systems in November 2004, one month after the 

law was enacted, to implement this authority where 100 percent 

levy is available. For example, IRS recently levied 100 percent of 

some DFAS vendor payments and collected $432,000 compared to 

$100,000 that would have been collected prior to the law’s enactVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:37 Dec 05, 2005 Jkt 022195 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\22195.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
35

ment. However, full use of this new authority has been delayed because the provision only permits 100 percent continuous levy for 

payments for ‘‘goods and services’’ and does not appear to apply to 

payments made for other kinds of property. FMS stands ready to 

work with IRS as it attempts to resolve this issue. 

Mr. Chairman, I would just like to echo the good work that has 

been done by the Federal Contractor Tax Compliance Task Force. 

I think we have made a lot of progress and I would support going 

forward with that. That concludes my remarks. I would be happy 

to answer any questions. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Commissioner Gregg. I do appreciate the work that is being done by the task force. I also want to 

say that I appreciate FMS agreeing with the goal of doing those 

things we can to make sure we limit the bypasses for the Treasury 

Offset Program. I understand some of the challenges faced with 

Fedwire and some of the volume issues with ACH–CTX. I just 

think it is important that we review these programs and in fact 

limit as best we can those dollars that are passing around the levy 

program. So let us continue the review on one of those areas. 

I have a question though about your concern with picking and 

choosing which type of payments to dispense. At least as I listened 

to your testimony—I think your approach is, let us work with the 

agencies to make sure that they do a better job. First, I take it you 

would agree with the presumption that any agency it makes sense 

to get the correct taxpayer identification number for anybody contracting with an agency. 

Mr. GREGG. Yes. 

Senator COLEMAN. So if we require that, and I think we have 

done it now—I think there is a voluntary system now, give us that. 

That would go a long way to getting that. As I understand it, in 

the past year four-fifths of the State Department’s payment documents had no names, three-quarters of the Department of Education, and half of the Department of Transportation’s payment 

documents had erroneous or no taxpayer identification numbers. 

Would those statements be correct from your perspective? 

Mr. GREGG. I am not sure where those numbers came from, Mr. 

Chairman. What I would say is that I reviewed a March 2005 report, and while we still have a ways to go, many agencies are doing 

an outstanding job in getting tax ID numbers for contract payments. Many of them are at 95 to 99 percent. There are a handful 

of agencies, at least in the report that I saw, where the numbers 

are very small. Whether or not some of those may have legitimate 

reasons, security or other reasons, I am not sure. But I think in 

the last 2 years, the increase in tax ID numbers and the compliance has grown tremendously. 

Senator COLEMAN. I believe that those numbers came from the 

GAO report. My concern is this, that we still have evidence, for 

whatever reason—I am not pointing fingers at agencies, but that 

we are not getting the kind of compliance that we should have with 

the Debt Collection Improvement Act. FMS is the central player, 

in a position not to pick and choose who are winners or losers in 

this process, not to interfere with the disbursal of funds, but to say 

up front that unless we get names, unless we get taxpayer identification numbers, we are not processing these payments. 

36

How is that somehow interfering with the timely disbursal of 

funds or picking and choosing which payments are disbursed if we 

simply tell the agencies and the contractors that we are going to 

require this? This is the process that we are going to follow. 

Mr. GREGG. If we do that we certainly run the risk of not paying 

contractors who in fact do not owe taxes. That is an issue that I 

think is one that I would much prefer to go back to solving at the 

front end and not putting us in a position of saying—since this 

field is not complete, for some reason we are going to reject it. We 

make nearly one billion payments a year, Mr. Chairman, and 78 

percent of those are electronic. I would note the speed with which 

those flow through and go out, and the fact that we actually match 

the great majority of those against our debtor database before they 

go out the door. 

The other thing is the legal responsibility of that certifying officer who says this is a legal payment that has to be made by the 

government. I would really find it very difficult for FMS to be in 

the questionable role of saying, this field did not have quite enough 

information and we are going to reject it. 

Senator COLEMAN. I am not going to debate this with you, Commissioner Gregg, but it appears to me that you are in a very central place here. I want to make sure that payments are made timely. I want to make sure that we are not harassing or abusing folks 

who are fulfilling all their obligations. But it appears to me when 

you do a contract with the Federal Government there are certain 

things you can be required to do. Senator Levin raised one by saying, maybe an affirmative statement about whether you owe any 

taxes. It is not a right to do business with the government. It is 

a contractual obligation of which we then have certain requirements, and one of the requirements should be to simply provide 

certain information that should allow us to get those folks who are 

abusing the system. Not hurting or slowing up anybody else. 

My problem is that we are relying now upon agencies, and I am 

reading GAO reports that say we are still getting three-quarters of 

one, Department of Education, half of another department, not providing taxpayer identification numbers. At a certain point in time 

we have to get back to them also. 

But you are in a unique position here and my sense is that we 

are not being clear enough, and we are not being aggressive 

enough, and we are not being complete enough in getting this basic 

information that would allow the system to work. This system 

should not slow up payments. It simply puts in place saying, if 

there is a problem—based on a taxpayer ID number and a name. 

Two bits of information. Not hard to do. So again we are going to 

push this because we are not—the problem is the system today is 

not working. It is not working the way it should. 

Mr. GREGG. If I might, Mr. Chairman. I think it is working in 

the great majority of cases. I am not sure whether those are particular agency location codes so they may not be for the whole department. They may be subcomponents. But when I said in my 

statement that we are going to take a look at this within a year, 

one of the concerns is narrowing this down to making sure that we 

are dealing with contractor payments. Sometimes, as you heard 

from the GAO report, the field that identifies the type of payment 

37

may or may not be accurate. We are normally not in a position to 

know that. 

So if we can take a look at this to see what is going to happen 

with the voluntary provision that we are working on through the 

task force to get the information, and go back and see what agencies that we are sending out letters to every month say, here are 

problem areas. See where we are and then to see whether or not 

we can really hone in on contractor payments. If we were to go this 

route, give the agencies and contractors sufficient notice that this 

is what we are going to do, I would like the time, if I may, to study 

the issue and see what progress we can make. 

Senator COLEMAN. One final question to follow-up and, Commissioner, I may have to come back to you in a second round. But I 

believe that in 1997, as I recall in September 1997, the Department 

of Treasury published proposed regulations requiring a taxpayer 

identification number to be provided. The proposal required Federal agencies provide taxpayer identification numbers. That was 

1997. That was then rejected. The final rule did not have that requirement. We went to a TIN implementation report. Now the 

GAO comes back and says we have $17 billion in payments to contractors that did not pass through the Treasury Offset Program because they had blank or invalid taxpayer identification numbers. 

So in 1997 we had something on the table that could have corrected this; and stepped back. Obviously we have the problem 

today. Do you intend them to go back and look at this 1997 regulation and see if in fact we can be in a position where we actually 

require taxpayer identification numbers? 

Mr. GREGG. In fact I am the one who pulled that back when I 

first arrived at FMS. I thought it was too broad a brush. I would 

much rather focus—we are collecting $3 billion a year from our 

overall debt collection programs, so we are matching a lot of taxpayer names and numbers. If we were to do something, I would 

much prefer going in for a more finely-honed approach in dealing 

with contractors, I agree it is terrible that in fact they are doing 

business with the government and getting paid and owe debt. So 

I would not go with a broad brush approach. If we did something, 

I would focus it more on contractors. 

Senator COLEMAN. Commissioner, I will just ask one question, 

but I do want to come back to have some follow-up questions after 

Senator Akaka. 

This question about contractor debarment that has been raised, 

and it goes to Senator Collins’ issue of, could we define a type of 

conduct, maybe a pattern of conduct—I understand the consequences of debarment and that there may be business folks who 

have some poor business practices and they need to be better educated and I am willing to work with them. But I worry in the egregious cases. Clearly what we saw with the Defense Department 

there were case of egregious abuse; what we have seen with the 

GAO and these civilian contractors of in some cases long term patterns of abuse. 

Do you think that it would make sense to have a contract debarment provision available to Federal agencies? 

Mr. EVERSON. I think that as the Chairman indicated, you want 

to get at this at the front end, so that is important. The other thing 

38

you want to do, frankly, is you want the IRS to do a better job of 

the collections process on an ongoing basis. I talked about the tax 

gap; it is terribly important that we get after the piece of it that 

is the non-payment. That is about 10 percent of the total tax gap. 

Then you have this back end piece that we are talking about here 

today. I think we can make progress, frankly, on all of those areas. 

You are raising what I think is, frankly, a broader procurement 

question for OMB and Clay Johnson who runs the management 

side as to what procurement policy ought to be governmentwide. 

From my point of view, obviously anything you do to tighten up in 

this area sends a strong message. My overall concern is though 

that when you start to carve out contractors with different procedures, it can be problematic because people and businesses shift in 

and out of that role, if you will, and you want to make sure that 

you are doing, once again, the proper balancing of the taxpayer 

rights. 

Senator COLEMAN. Just one quick question. Are there any debarment mechanisms for drug offenses, for national security? 

Mr. EVERSON. There are debarment procedures—my recollection—I cannot totally take the Fifth on this since I did have that 

management job at OMB. There are very real debarment proceedings. If you look at what happened with some of the big corporate convictions, Enron, for instance, was debarred after it had 

its problems, and it is my recollection in other big outfits that does 

happen. So that is there and there is the possibility right now to 

go forward on that. 

But I think maybe I was responding more broadly. I think that 

the Senator was raising questions about looking at tax debts. But 

again, this is complicated, because as Senator Levin says, we had 

this conversation last year. You can have a very legitimate dispute 

with the government over a balance that is owed. 

I want to also say, not all the employment taxes that are owed 

are criminal. They have been characterized as criminal in this 

hearing today. I am a little disturbed by that. What happens is we 

are looking at, oftentimes, these smaller businesses and a lot of 

these businesses get in trouble. If you wandered around with our 

revenue officers who are trying to collect these monies, what happens is somebody really thinks they are going to make it and they 

say, I am just going to borrow this money to get through this next 

quarter, and then another quarter goes by, and then if we are not 

on them soon enough it keeps going and it pyramids. Now that is 

different from some of the matters that you have raised and the 

GAO has identified where there are willful patterns of abuse. But 

I do not want to paint all these 27,000 contractors or the ones last 

year as criminals. I think that is wrong. 

Senator COLEMAN. I think it would be correct to say that there 

are criminal penalties for this type of conduct. You still have to 

prove the case. You have to show intent. But there are certainly 

criminal penalties and I think that is what Senator Levin was referring to. 

Senator Akaka. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Gregg, in a March 2004 letter to the Chairman of this Subcommittee you indicated that your agency was closely monitoring 

39

actions it could take to aid in the collection of State tax debt, specifically with regard to the formation of reciprocal agreements 

under DCIA. However, GAO’s June 2005 draft report indicates that 

none of the States they contacted, and they contacted 17 of them 

in all, none of them had been contacted by FMS. Also none of the 

States were aware of the program, all of them expressed interest 

in participating. 

Can you reconcile this for us, the statement you made in March 

2004 and also the GAO findings? 

Mr. GREGG. You mentioned that we are helping the State of Hawaii collect State tax debt, and when we got that authority we 

went out to every State and aggressively pushed that, and we still 

have four or five States that are not doing it. We were not actually 

looking for reciprocal agreements there. We were saying, we will, 

for a very modest fee, help you collect your State tax debts. 

So I would slightly differ—I do not disagree with what GAO said 

the answers were, but when you go out to States and start saying, 

here is what you have to do to be able to work with—even to collect 

State tax debt, and then if we actually did reciprocal agreeing 

where we were looking to them to help us collect some of our Federal debt, I am pretty sure that the answer is not going to be, ‘‘no 

problem, we will do it right away.’’ They are going to want to take 

a hard look at what is the bottom line. 

On the State tax debt that we have collected, we have collected 

$200 million a year, clearly an obvious winner with minimal 

amount of effort from the States. But you get into States like California where finally, after pushing for about 4 years, we finally got 

them to start the offset process for State tax debts. They are still 

not taking advantage of the whole thing. They are a very decentralized State. 

For example, the State of Michigan has disclosure issues, the 

State of Connecticut is building a new system. Those are the sort 

of things that you run into when you really start talking about, the 

fact that we have a database that is huge and if you are going to 

help us collect some of our Federal debts, here are the kinds of 

things you would have to do. 

Let me take one other point. We collect each year about $1.5 billion in child support payments. We do that through the offset program. Most of that, virtually all of that comes from offsetting tax 

refunds. They do have authority and we use it to collect from other 

payments that we have. We collected $2.6 million in fiscal 2004. So 

you see, when you get out of the tax refund area, which is where 

the bulk of that money came from, and you get to these other payment systems such as Federal salary and vendor payments, the 

amounts are quite modest. And that has been in place for a while. 

It is $2.6 million versus $1.5 billion that we collected. 

So I guess my point is that we would certainly be willing to work 

with States if we thought that the cost benefit for both of us made 

sense. It is just one of those things that while we have recently 

broached it with some of the State organizations, we will have to 

wait and see whether or not there is a real interest, because there 

is going to be some expense and there is not as much gold in those 

hills as it might appear. 

40

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Gregg, what would you say about working 

with States on these reciprocal agreements? Are you going to press 

it? Because the report we have had is that States are not aware 

of this. If you are going to press it, do you have a program on a 

timely basis? 

Mr. GREGG. We will begin to raise the issue with them, but they 

are going to have to look at what it is going to cost them to do this, 

and we are going to have to help them look and see what the possible return might be, because for some of these the return may be 

quite modest. As you know, all the States are strapped for money 

too, so if they are going to invest $50,000, $100,000 or $200,000 to 

change to do reprogramming or build a database to take any of our 

debts, it may well not be worth it for them. But we will continue 

to discuss it with them and see if there are areas that have potential. 

There is legislation, by the way, that was proposed last year that 

would do more, far more in this area than anything else that at 

least I think is in the GAO report, and that was legislation that 

we supported a couple of years ago which would allow for the collection of State tax debts even if someone had moved to a new 

State. Right now we are limited—the debt has to be owed in the 

State in which they currently live. If we have the authority to 

match for people who move to another State, we could collect considerably more money. That legislation was proposed I think in IRS 

legislation that did not get passed last year. So that would actually 

help a lot. 

Senator AKAKA. These will have to be enforced and records need 

to be shared on that. 

Mr. Gregg, I am disappointed with FMS’s leadership in the area 

of debt collection. While FMS should be proactive in this area, it 

seems that any improvements have been made in reaction to the 

good oversight work of Chairman Coleman, this Subcommittee, and 

GAO. Can you describe what FMS has done since 2004 in the area 

of improving Federal debt collection that has not been in reaction 

to congressional oversight? 

Mr. GREGG. If you take everything off the table that the task 

force has been working on, maybe the list is not that long. I will 

say that it takes the IRS and FMS and others to make those a reality, so I think that, for example, working with IRS to increase the 

amount of tax debt that is made available for matching. That is 

something that we have been advocating for some time. The fact 

that it was also part of the task force I do not think diminishes our 

role in thinking that was a good idea a long time ago. 

We were also advocating some time ago improving the due process. I would like to see that built into the contracts when contractors first sign the contract, that they waive the due process notice 

that they might have through levy. That is something that we have 

been for, or something like that, for some time. 

We have brought in a lot of new debts into our system. We have 

to make sure that is controlled properly. If you visualize the billions and billions of dollars of debts that we have there, trying to 

manage that process, make sure the proper security, proper controls, and the right authentication happens to match, where we do 

not go out and improperly take funds from people, it is not someVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:37 Dec 05, 2005 Jkt 022195 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\DOCS\22195.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
41

thing you do once and forget about. It is an ongoing process. At the 

same time we have many things going on. In another part of our 

program we are building new systems. 

So I think to me the characterization that we are not managing 

this properly is wrong because it focuses on the things that we 

have not been doing as well as we should perhaps, but there is a 

ton of things that we have been doing. If you look at the fact that 

we are collecting $3 billion a year, and with relatively small staff, 

those are important achievements. And the number of complaints 

that we get about the contractors that we hire, the private collection agencies, is minimal. Why? Because we actively manage that 

and monitor what they are doing. So I disagree with that assessment. 

Is there more that can be done? Yes. But there is just a ton of 

things that we have going on in a relatively small organization. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Gregg, GAO reports that about $66 billion 

in payments to civilian agency contractors were unable to result in 

computer matches to identify contractors with unpaid taxes because the agency payment forms left out key information such as 

the contractor’s name or taxpayer identification number. It seems 

reasonable to me that the agency should have this information 

available for each contractor that is receiving Federal dollars. 

Why can’t you withhold these payments until all of this information is updated and complete? And if information is not there, why 

does FMS have to make the payment? 

Mr. GREGG. It does go back to the earlier question. I think the 

other thing that I would want to say is that agencies have been 

making really good progress. I am not saying that it is perfect, because it is not. What we have been doing is going out and pushing 

agencies to make sure that all the payment information is right 

that should be there, and I expect that will have additional results, 

especially after they see the transcript from the Subcommittee. 

But what I would like to do is to work on that, with the IRS and 

others to make sure that the information is obtained when the contract is signed through that voluntary basis, and then let us take 

a look at it, and see where we are. If, in fact, we continue to have 

a problem with contractor payments not having enough information then I would reconsider whether or not to withhold those payments. But I know if we do that we will stop payments for people 

who do not know taxes and there will be an uproar on that. But 

that is something that if you would allow us time to take a look 

at it we will do. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time has expired. 

I have further questions and also some questions on behalf of 

Senator Levin. 

Senator COLEMAN. Thank you, Senator Akaka. I am going to 

have a follow-up round and I will also keep the record open for 2 

weeks to ensure that if there are any questions that other Members of the Subcommittee have, that they will be responded to. So 

I am just going to follow up for a few minutes with Commissioner 

Everson and if you want to continue, you can. If not, we will, as 

I said, hold the record open and make sure that there are responses to both your questions, Senator Levin’s, and any other 

Members of the Subcommittee. 

42

Commissioner, let me follow up on this concern about how do we 

get on top of things up front rather than just responding. Clearly, 

the Federal Government does not need to do business with tax 

cheats. There is no requirement to do business with tax cheats, and 

in fact as my colleagues have indicated, tax cheats have a competitive edge. They have an unethical competitive edge over those individuals who are paying their taxes as a cost of doing business. The 

tax cheat can factor the non-payment as a none cost lower than the 

amount that they need in order to make a profit and submit a 

lower bid, and there is something egregious about that. 

I am getting into the Section 6103 issue. It is interesting, we are 

listening to these outrageous stories of tax cheats who invest in 

sports team. We do not even know the name of the sports team. 

GAO can get this information and issue a report but we get no information as to who these people are. 

Can the IRS notify Federal contracting officials about Federal 

contractors who are abusing the tax system so they can avoid signing contracts with them? What kind of ability do you have to do 

that up front? If not, how do you overcome these limitations? 

Mr. EVERSON. Let me respond first to your overall observation 

about the effect of non-compliance. Non-compliance is corrosive, 

and what we are focusing on here is old debts that are due. That 

does not even begin to get at the tax gap. The bulk of the tax gap 

relates to individuals and it relates to the under-reporting of income. If somebody is running their business and they are underreporting their income then they can price their goods and services 

at a lower level, so they have an absolute competitive advantage. 

That exists in this discussion that we are having today, but it exists more broadly. 

Again, it would be easy to ramp up our enforcement efforts with 

a lot more information sharing. The code is quite clear on the privacy of tax returns. The real exception to this is in the charitable 

sector where not-for-profit returns are public. I have testified that 

Section 6103 should be looked at in terms of more information 

sharing with other State regulators in areas like the charities. The 

Subcommittee has expressed interest in some of these abuses. 

Right now we are precluded from sharing this information. The 

kind of steps we have done jointly with FMS, I think, have improved things. I think that what Commissioner Gregg is talking 

about in terms of going into the future, starting in October where 

there will be this consent to provide the information, the TIN, by 

the contractor if you want to be on that DOD registry. That is 

going to help. That is going to make a difference. 

But it does not get at this core issue of the absolute wall that 

exists. I testified, I remember being here in late 2003, I cannot 

even share information with the PCAOB about investigations that 

we are doing on accounting firms, or with the SEC about investigations that we have on companies where we think that there is a 

heightened risk of compliance issues. 

So this is a broad object. It clearly is one that gets at that very 

real conflict between two public policy purposes here. One, making 

sure people who do business with the government have a clean bill 

of health. But two, this protection of taxpayer privacy. 

43

Senator COLEMAN. There is though an avenue by which this information is available that you presently have, as I understand it. 

If you bring criminal charges or you place a lien on a taxpayer, is 

that not public information with the court of jurisdiction? 

Mr. EVERSON. Yes, sir, that is right. Once it gets out in the public domain—go back to Son of Boss as an example, the settlement 

issue that you are familiar with. We had two-thirds of the players 

came in. Now some of them did not come in. Some of them are 

under criminal investigation. Some of them are in other litigation 

already. Once they go public, once they get into tax court or into 

district court they become known litigants, if you will. So if you go 

down an actual judicial proceeding, that changes things. That gets 

out there, that is right. And if there is an active criminal investigation, of course that gets shared with the people who need to know. 

Senator COLEMAN. But let me see if we can tie this to Federal 

contractors. You have a Federal agency that is going to contract 

with a security firm that has had a lien placed against them. They 

have gone through the system. It would go through the offset program. You have the lien and you would be able to then take X 

number of dollars. So the agency, as I understand it, would not 

know that the contractor with whom they are dealing has a tax 

lien or has a criminal conviction; is that correct? 

Mr. EVERSON. That is a procurement question. I do not know 

what the procurement procedures are for the individual agency, be 

it—you talk about Homeland Security or Veterans Affairs. I am not 

sure what their procedures are and what they check beforehand. 

But I think we all agree that tax compliance is not something that 

is a centerpiece of their procurement process. 

Senator COLEMAN. It goes back to the question Senator Levin 

said, asking folks to volunteer—two ways to approach it. One, you 

ask them, voluntarily, do you owe taxes, just so that we know that. 

That way you would make sure payments would go through the offset program in spite of whether they are Fedwire or anything else. 

So you would have a system, somebody owes taxes——

But here is my question. If it is public information, if it information that goes through a court, why couldn’t the IRS provide that 

information to Federal contract officials? Why couldn’t there be——

Mr. EVERSON. Something like a lien? You are saying we would 

have a special program if a lien exits—to make sure that other 

agencies know that? 

Senator COLEMAN. Public information. At the point you publish 

the lien, taxpayer’s name, address, taxpayer identification number, 

amount and type of tax owed is public information, but only in the 

court of jurisdiction. So it is there. It is public, but if you are a Federal contract official you are not going to go to every court in the 

country to find that. 

Mr. EVERSON. I think we can obviously look at that. The task 

force could look at what it would take to do that. That is a thin 

strip of this though, I would indicate. 

Senator COLEMAN. I would appreciate taking a look at information that is already public, to simply make it more available and 

see if that would help the Federal agencies in being more effective 

in dealing with those that have obligations. 

44

Let me get back to this question I talked about earlier about 

prosecutions. We had the 47 cases regarding the Department of Defense. You have done, I think, an extraordinary job working with 

the task force in correcting some of the problems we have seen. 

But the question that I asked the first panel, it did not appear 

that in any of those 47 cases that any criminal action had been 

taken. I recall one of those cases was an individual who I believe 

bought some property on an island offshore, contractor owed in $10 

million in unpaid taxes. I think the business was turned over to 

relatives who were also tax delinquents. It would appear to me that 

we had in those instances some outrageous cases. 

The first thrust should be administrative. We should use administrative remedies. Criminal prosecutions are a measure of last resort. But if you have an outrageous case like the guy that owed $10 

million and had relatives that owed money, I am not aware of 

whether any criminal actions have been taken. Can you tell me 

whether any have been in regard to those 47 cases? 

Mr. EVERSON. Last year when we talked I committed that what 

we would do is take these 47 cases out of the queue. Normally, our 

business units take a look at these matters and they may or may 

not make a referral. We short-cut that process and asked the criminal investigators just to take a look at the files and see whether 

they would want to sweep any in. My understanding is that we 

have active criminal investigation underway in three of these matters. 

Now again, there is a difference, as you appreciate, between 

what is a colorful, dramatic write-up without names and then when 

you get to establishing what is going to be prosecutable in a courtroom, and then also how that matches out against—criminal investigations, we are forced into doing things like supporting, for the 

first time, a technical tax shelter investigations, or the charitable 

abuses. 

So what I asked our people to do is to make sure our CI people 

took a look at each of these, and apparently they reached a judgment that three of these merit, in their view, this full follow-up. 

They are going to do the same thing, I think they have done on 

the 50 that have already been identified by GAO and I understand 

there are three or four that they think are promising as well. Now 

that does not mean that there will be an indictment in any of these 

cases. There can be a variety of reasons, as you, better than most, 

appreciate. But we have gone through that and looked at it on that 

basis. 

Senator COLEMAN. I would just urge you to—I would hope that 

one of the deciding factors would not be whether it is an ongoing 

business. I am just concerned here—I appreciate the judgments 

that have to be made. I was in that position myself for many years. 

But I just want to make sure in making those judgments that we 

are not factoring in things that should not be factored. In this case 

one of them would be whether it is an ongoing business. You have 

individuals—particularly in cases where we see people doing 

things, getting rid of the business, and then doing it again. Just 

sometimes there is a tendency to say, they are not in knotted operation anymore so we are not—we have other more important stuff. 

45

I want you to take a look at that and at least recognize the concern 

of this chair, and I think other Members of the Subcommittee. 

Mr. EVERSON. I agree with you. As I said to you when I think 

we chatted a few weeks ago in your office, I think that having the 

hearing again will give me a good opportunity to go back, ask those 

questions again, and put a finer point on it. I am very proud of the 

rebuilt enforcement efforts that the IRS has been undertaking. I 

know you are enthusiastic about it. So there are individual choices 

that our folks make, but I can certainly go back and ask about this 

particular program again and I will. 

Senator COLEMAN. We have seen the results with the Son of 

Boss, billions of dollars that are now coming back into the system 

because of increased enforcement efforts. I think this is one where 

from a cost-benefit analysis we are seeing clearly the benefit that 

far exceeds the cost. I wish we were able to provide more resources 

for enforcement. A number of us will certainly continue to fight for 

that in areas where it needs to be done. We are not talking about 

getting the poor individual who just cannot make ends meet and 

finds they have a problem with the IRS. There is some massive 

fraud and abuse going on that costs the government billions of dollars and I think we can direct resources where across-the-board 

folks will say this is fair, this is equitable, this is just and needs 

to be done. 

Mr. EVERSON. I wish both you and Senator Levin were appropriators, but I am not sure you would not change your stripes once 

you got over to the other committee. 

Senator COLEMAN. If that happens, we will chat. 

Gentlemen, I want to thank you for your testimony. The record 

will be kept open for 14 days. 

With that, this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:57 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(47)

A P P E N D I X 


22195.001
48


22195.002
49


22195.003
50


22195.004
51


22195.005
52


22195.006
53


22195.007
54


22195.008
55


22195.009
56


22195.010
57


22195.011
58


22195.012
59


22195.013
60


22195.014
61


22195.015
62


22195.016
63


22195.017
64


22195.018
65


22195.019
66


22195.020
67


22195.021
68


22195.022
69


22195.023
70


22195.024
71


22195.025
72


22195.026
73


22195.027
74


22195.028
75


22195.029
76


22195.030
77


22195.031
78


22195.032
79


22195.033
80


22195.034
81


22195.035
82


22195.036
83


22195.037
84


22195.038
85


22195.039
86


22195.040
87


22195.041
88


22195.042
89


22195.043
90


22195.044
91


22195.045
92


22195.046
93


22195.047
94


22195.048
95


22195.049
96


22195.050
97


22195.051
98


22195.052
99


22195.053
100


22195.054
101


22195.055
102


22195.056
103


22195.057
104


22195.058
105


22195.059
106


22195.060
107


22195.061
108


22195.062
109


22195.063
110


22195.064
111


22195.065
112


22195.066
113


22195.067
114


22195.068
115


22195.069
116


22195.070
117


22195.071
118


22195.072
119


22195.073
120


22195.074
121


22195.075
122


22195.076
123


22195.077
124


22195.078
125


22195.079
126


22195.080
127


22195.081
128


22195.082
129


22195.083
130


22195.084
131


22195.085
132


22195.086
133


22195.087
134


22195.088
135


22195.089
136


22195.090
137


22195.091
138


22195.092
139


22195.093
140


22195.094
141


22195.095
142


22195.096
143


22195.097
144


22195.098
145


22195.099
146


22195.100
147


22195.101
148


22195.102
149


22195.103
150


22195.104
151


22195.105
152


22195.106
153


22195.107
154


22195.108
155


22195.109
156


22195.110
157


22195.111
158


22195.112
159


22195.113
160


22195.114
161


22195.115
162


22195.116
163


22195.117
164


22195.118
165


22195.119
166


22195.120
167


22195.121
168


22195.122
169


22195.123
170


22195.124
171


22195.125
172


22195.126
173


22195.127
174


22195.128
175


22195.129
176


22195.130
177


22195.131
178


22195.132
179


22195.133
180


22195.134
181


22195.135
182


22195.136
183


22195.137
184


22195.138
185


22195.139
186


22195.140
187


22195.141
188


22195.142
189


22195.143
190


22195.144
191


22195.145
192


22195.146
193


22195.147
194


22195.148
195


22195.149
196


22195.150
197


22195.151
198


22195.152
199


22195.153
200


22195.154
201


22195.155
202


22195.156
203


22195.157
204


22195.158
205


22195.159
206


22195.160
207


22195.161
208


22195.162
209


22195.163
210


22195.164
211


22195.165
212


22195.166
213


22195.167
214


22195.168
215


22195.169
216


22195.170
217


22195.171
218


22195.172
219


22195.173
220


22195.174
221


22195.175
222


22195.176
223


22195.177
224


22195.178
225


22195.179
226


22195.180
227


22195.181
228


22195.182
229


22195.183
230


22195.184
231


22195.185
232


22195.186
233


22195.187
234


22195.188
235


22195.189
236


22195.190
237


22195.191
238


22195.192
239


22195.193
240


22195.194
241


22195.195
242

Æ


22195.196