Tax Compliance: Federal Grant and Direct Assistance Recipients Who Abuse the Federal Tax System
Released: 2007-12-17T00:00:00

Letter

Background

A federal grant is an award of financial assistance from a federal agency to an organization to carry out an agreed-upon public purpose. A Direct Payment for Specified Use (direct assistance) is an award of financial assistance from the federal government to individuals, private firms, and other private institutions to encourage or subsidize a particular activity by conditioning the receipt of the assistance on a particular performance by the recipient. As such, federal grants and direct assistance programs do not include solicited contracts for the procurement of goods and services for the federal government.

Based on our analysis of fiscal years 2004 and 2005 data from the Federal Assistance Award Data System (FAADS), federal agencies collectively awarded grants and direct assistance of approximately $300 billion annually. Further analysis of the FAADS data indicates that approximately 80 percent of federal grants and direct assistance consist of federal funds provided to state and local governments, which, in turn, disburse funds to the ultimate recipients. Consequently, only about 20 percent of awarded funds are provided directly from the federal government to the organization that ultimately spends the money.

Governmentwide policies affecting the award and administration of grants to nongovernmental entities are covered in OMB Circular No. A-110, Uniform Administrative Requirements for Grants and Agreements with Institutions of Higher Education, Hospitals, and Other Non-Profit Organizations. OMB Circular No. A-102, Grants and Cooperative Agreements with State and Local Governments, provides governmentwide guidance for administering grants provided to state and local governments and prescribes similar procedures as those included in Circular No. A-110. Direct assistance programs are not subject to the same governmentwide policies as grants; procedures governing the application and award processes for direct assistance are prescribed in guidance and regulations promulgated by the cognizant federal agency responsible for administering the program.

Most grant applicants that apply directly to the federal government are required to complete an Application for Federal Assistance, Standard Form (SF) 424. The SF 424 provides federal agencies with entity information, such as name, employer identification number, address, and a descriptive title of the project for which the grant will be used. The applicant is required to certify that the information provided on the SF 424 is true and correct and whether the applicant is currently delinquent on any federal debt.

Grant and Direct Assistance Recipients Owe About $790 Million in Taxes

While most federal grant and direct assistance recipients pay their federal taxes, we identified tens of thousands of grant and direct assistance recipients that collectively owed about $790 million in federal taxes as of September 2006. These tax debts were owed by entities who received federal payments directly from federal payment systems during fiscal years 2005 and 2006 and individuals who participated in HUD’s Section 8 tenant-based housing program as landlords during fiscal years 2005 and 2006. We used IRS’s September 2006 unpaid assessments file data to calculate the amount of taxes owed at or about the time the various grant recipients received their grant payments. Specifically, we found 2,000 of about 32,000 recipients (about 6 percent) who received federal grant and direct assistance benefits directly from three of the largest federal payment systems had more than $270 million of unpaid federal taxes. About $110 million of the $270 million in unpaid taxes represents unpaid payroll taxes. 37,000 of over 1 million landlords (about 4 percent) participating in the HUD Section 8 program had about $520 million of unpaid federal taxes. Most of these tax debts were unpaid individual income taxes.

In our audit, we found that grant recipients had a substantial amount of unpaid payroll taxes. Employers may be subject to civil and criminal penalties if they do not remit payroll taxes to the federal government. When an employer withholds taxes from an employee’s wages, the employer is deemed to have a fiduciary responsibility to hold these funds “in trust” for the federal government until the employer makes a federal tax deposit in that amount. To the extent these withheld amounts are not forwarded, the employer is liable for these amounts, as well as the employer’s matching Federal Insurance Contribution Act contributions for Social Security and Medicare. Individuals employed by the employer (e.g., owners or officers) may be held personally liable for the withheld amounts not forwarded and assessed a civil monetary penalty known as a trust fund recovery penalty (TFRP). Willful failure to remit payroll taxes can also be a criminal felony offense punishable by imprisonment of up to 5 years, while the failure to properly segregate payroll tax funds can be a criminal misdemeanor offense punishable by imprisonment of up to a year. The law imposes no penalties upon an employee for the employer’s failure to remit payroll taxes since the employer is responsible for submitting the amounts withheld. The Social Security and Medicare trust funds are subsidized or made whole for unpaid payroll taxes by the federal government’s general fund. Thus, personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, and other government revenues are used to pay for these shortfalls to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.

Although grant and direct assistance recipients had about $790 million in unpaid federal taxes as of September 30, 2006, this amount likely understates the full extent of unpaid taxes for these or other organizations and individuals. For example, except for our case study involving HUD’s Section 8 tenant-based housing program, our estimate of grant and direct assistance recipients was limited to data from three of the largest government payment systems and thus did not include all federal grant and direct assistance disbursements. Further, our analysis of the three payment systems did not include recipients of payments who received their payments through state and local government entities. Based on our analysis of data from the FAADS, we estimated that payments paid by the federal government to final recipients account for only about 20 percent of the total grant and direct assistance funds awarded by the federal government. The remaining 80 percent of grant and direct assistance funds are provided to states and local governments, which, in turn, disburse them to the ultimate recipient.

Further, to avoid overestimating the amount owed, we limited our scope to tax debts that were affirmed by either the taxable entity or a tax court for tax periods prior to 2006. We did not include the most current tax year because recently assessed tax debts that appear as unpaid taxes may involve matters that are routinely resolved between the taxpayer and IRS, with the taxes paid, abated, or both within a short period. We eliminated these types of debt by focusing on unpaid taxes for tax periods prior to calendar year 2006 and eliminating tax debt of $100 or less.

The IRS tax database reflects only the amount of unpaid taxes either reported by the individual or organization on a tax return or assessed by IRS through its various enforcement programs. The IRS database does not reflect amounts owed by organizations and individuals that have not filed tax returns and for which IRS has not assessed tax amounts due. Further, our analysis did not attempt to account for organizations or individuals that purposely underreported income and were not specifically identified by IRS as owing the additional taxes. According to IRS, underreporting of income accounted for more than 80 percent of the estimated $345 billion annual gross tax gap. Consequently, the full extent of unpaid taxes for grant and direct assistance participants is not known.

Examples of Selected Recipients of Grants and Direct Assistance Involved in Abusive and Criminal Activity Related to Federal Tax System

For all 20 cases of grant and direct assistance recipients we investigated for examples of abusive and criminal activity related to the federal tax system based on the large amount of tax debt and number of delinquent tax periods, we found in all cases evidence that indicated the existence of such abusive and criminal activities. Of these 20 cases, 14 cases were not- for-profit organizations that received grant payments and also had unpaid payroll taxes, some dating as far back as the 1990s. For example, one educational institution failed to submit employee payroll withholding taxes several times within a 3-year period and accumulated an unpaid tax liability of almost $4 million. For the cases of payroll tax delinquencies we investigated, officials responsible for these organizations failed to fulfill their role as “trustees” of employees’ payroll tax withholdings and forward this money to IRS as required by federal tax laws. Instead, these officials diverted the withholdings to fund the organizations’ operations or for personal benefits, such as their own salaries or extravagant vacations. The other 6 cases involved individuals who owed individual income taxes and who also received government subsidy payments through HUD’s Section 8 low-income housing program. In one of these cases, the landlord attempted to evict renters who were instructed by IRS to pay the rent directly to IRS instead of the landlord. In all 20 cases, we saw significant evidence of IRS collection activity occurring, but in only a couple of cases did we see action related to investigating these entities and individuals for criminal violations of federal tax laws.

Table 1 highlights 10 cases of grant recipients we investigated with unpaid taxes. The other 10 cases are summarized in appendix II.

The following provide illustrative detailed information on several of these cases: Case 4: This landlord participating in the Section 8 tenant-based housing program was involved in a fraudulent real estate transaction in addition to owing over $3 million in delinquent income taxes. The landlord was indicted on mortgage fraud and racketeering for attempting to sell real estate at an inflated price using false appraisals. Previously, the landlord’s family member was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering in a scheme to sell fraudulent vacation club memberships. In addition, the landlord was charged with fraudulent conveyance of over $3 million worth of property to defraud creditors.

Case 7: This grant recipient organization, which provides medical care to low-income families, has experienced financial problems throughout most of the 2000s and has several hundred thousand dollars in delinquent payroll taxes. During these years, while failing to properly fund its employee pension plan, the grant recipient paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees to a former employee. Grant recipient could not document to other auditors over a million dollars in expenses relating to grants. Grant recipient has not made required contributions totaling tens of thousands of dollars to its pension plan. In addition, IRS assessed a TFRP against key grant recipient officials.

Case 9: This not-for-profit grant recipient has been in operation since the 1980s to provide social services to disadvantaged individuals and families and has another closely related not-for-profit entity that also received federal grants. The recipient has over $1 million in unpaid payroll taxes dating back to the early 2000s, and IRS has placed several tax liens against the grantee’s property. The grant recipient has had recurring financial problems and an independent audit report raised concerns about the entity’s ability to continue operating. The recipient has also been cited for commingling funds among related grant recipients and for not having a functioning Board of Directors as represented to the granting agency. The recipient has been recommended for disbarment.

Case 10: This not-for-profit grant recipient stopped making payroll tax deposits for several years beginning mid-2000s, accumulating unpaid payroll taxes totaling several hundreds of thousands of dollars. IRS filed liens against grantee assets and assessed the exempt organization with payroll tax violation penalties and interest totaling tens of thousands of dollars. A key grant recipient officer had a prior conviction for tax evasion and was again investigated for improperly using grant funds to purchase expensive clothing, a luxury vehicle, and lavish vacations and to pay taxes assessed from a prior tax evasion conviction. A key grantee officer had numerous individual income tax delinquencies.

Federal Agencies Do Not Prevent Delinquent Taxpayers from Participating in Federal Grant or Direct Assistance Programs

Neither federal law nor current governmentwide policies for administering federal grants or direct assistance prohibit applicants with unpaid federal taxes from receiving grants and direct assistance from the federal government. Even if such requirements did exist, absent consent from the taxpayer, federal law generally prohibits IRS from disclosing taxpayer data and, consequently, federal agencies have no access to tax data directly from IRS. Moreover, federal agencies we reviewed do not prevent organizations and individuals with unpaid federal taxes from receiving grants or direct assistance for the specific programs they administer.

With regard to administering federal grants, federal law and current governmentwide policies, as reflected in OMB Circulars, do not prohibit individuals and organizations with unpaid taxes from receiving grants. OMB Circulars provide only general guidance with regard to considering existing federal debt in awarding grants. Specifically, the Circulars state that if an applicant has a history of financial instability, or other special conditions, the federal agency may impose additional award requirements to protect the government’s interests. However, the Circulars do not specifically require federal agencies to take into account an applicant’s delinquent federal debt, including federal tax debt, when assessing applications. While they require grant applicants to self-certify in their standard government application (SF 424) whether they are currently delinquent on any federal debt, including federal taxes, the Circulars contain no provision instructing the agencies to verify such certifications or describing how such verification should be done. No assessment of tax debt is required by OMB on a sampling or risk-based assessment.

Although current governmentwide policies do not require it, federal agencies, such as HHS and Department of Education, have policies against awarding grants to applicants that owe federal debts. These policies state that a grant may not be awarded until the debt is satisfied or arrangements are made with the agency to which the debt is owed. However, awarding agencies rely extensively on applicants’ self-certifications that they are not delinquent on any federal debt, including tax debt. Certain agencies, such as HHS, stated that they check credit reports to see if the grant applicant has any outstanding tax liens prior to award of the contract. While it is difficult to validate the agencies’ assertions, none of these agencies could provide us examples where grant officials denied a grant based on self- disclosed tax delinquencies or required applicants to make repayment arrangements with the agency to which debt was owed.

Even if requirements to verify applicants’ disclosures did exist, federal law poses a significant challenge to federal granting agencies in determining the accuracy of representations made by organizations applying for grants. Specifically, the law does not permit IRS to disclose taxpayer information, including tax debts, to federal agency officials unless the taxpayer consents. Thus, unless an applicant provides consent requesting that IRS provide taxpayer information to federal agencies, certain tax debt information generally can only be discovered from public records when IRS files a tax lien against the property of a tax debtor. Further, representatives of one federal agency that has attempted to develop an approved consent form discovered that IRS may not accept certain signed consent forms because a requirement for an applicant to sign a consent form as a precondition to the agency’s acceptance of the application may be considered a form of duress and thus raise a disclosure issue. Notwithstanding, while information on filed tax liens is generally publicly available, IRS does not file tax liens on all tax debtors nor does IRS have a central repository of tax liens to which grant-awarding agencies have access. Further, available information on tax liens may not be current or accurate because other studies have shown that IRS has not always released tax liens from property when the tax debt has been satisfied.

Of the 20 organizations and individuals that we selected for additional investigation of abuse and criminal activity, 14 were grant recipients that were required to submit an application in order to be awarded a grant. In our review of the grant applications for the 14 grant cases, we found that 11 applicants certified in their applications that they were not currently delinquent in any federal debt, even though IRS had current tax assessments on file for these entities at the time the applications were filed. As a result, these 11 cases appear to have violated the False Statements Act because they did not declare their existing tax debt in their applications even though they were required to do so.

Direct assistance programs are generally not subject to the same governmentwide guidance for grants. Instead, the cognizant federal agencies implement the necessary regulations for administering the program. With regard to our HUD’s Section 8 tenant-based program case study, HUD regulations do not require local housing authorities to identify whether landlords who participate in HUD’s housing assistance program and receive housing subsidies have outstanding federal tax delinquencies or prohibit payments if such delinquencies are identified. HUD regulations do permit local housing authorities to deny program participation if a landlord has not paid state or local real estate taxes, fines, or assessments. HUD regulations, however, do not require local housing authorities to deny the landlord from participating in the HUD program if the landlord owes any delinquent federal debts, including federal taxes.

Conclusion

Because about 80 percent of all federal grants and direct assistance are administered and disbursed through state and local governments, the extent to which all final recipients of these federal payments owe taxes is not known. However, our limited audit has demonstrated that tens of thousands of grant and direct assistance recipients have taken advantage of the opportunity to avoid paying $790 million in federal taxes. At the same time they failed to pay their federal taxes, these individuals and organizations benefited by receiving billions of dollars of federal grants or direct assistance benefits. With regard to grants, allowing individuals and organizations to receive federal grants while not paying their federal taxes is not fair to the vast majority of grant applicants that pay their fair share of taxes. This practice causes a disincentive to individuals and organizations to pay their fair share of taxes and could lead to further erosion in compliance with the nation’s tax system.

Recommendations for Executive Action

We recommend that the Director, Office of Management and Budget, assess the need to issue guidance requiring federal agencies that award certain grants and other direct assistance, where appropriate in relation to the potential adverse effect on potential applications, to take the following two actions: Conduct actions that would help determine if applicants had unpaid federal tax debt, including obtaining applicant consent to inquire as to tax debt status from IRS; this could be achieved through sampling or other risk-based assessments.

Consider the result of those inquiries in the award determinations.

We also recommend that the Acting Commissioner of Internal Revenue evaluate the 20 referred cases detailed in this report for appropriate additional collection action or criminal investigation as warranted.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We received written comment from IRS and oral comments from OMB on the draft of this report. Both IRS and OMB agreed with the draft report’s recommendations. OMB also provided technical comments on the draft report, which we incorporated as appropriate. We have reprinted IRS’s written comments in their entirety in Appendix III.

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Appendix 1: Scope and Methodology

To address our first objective to describe the magnitude of tax debt owed, we obtained and analyzed federal payment databases from the Department of the Treasury’s Automated Standard Application Payment System (ASAP), the Department of Education’s Grant Administration and Payment System (GAPS), and the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Payment Management System (PMS) for fiscal years 2005 and 2006. These three agencies process grant and other assistance program payments on behalf of many federal agencies and, in fiscal years 2005 and 2006, processed over $460 billion in grant and direct assistance payments, excluding Medicare and Medicaid. Our analysis of data, however, was limited because approximately 80 percent of federal grant and direct assistance payments are paid to state and local governments, which then disburse funds to final recipients. Because identifying information on the final recipients of payments provided at the state and local level is not available at the federal level, our analysis was limited to those payments provided directly by the federal government to final recipients. We estimated these direct payments to final recipients represented about 20 percent of total federal grant and direct assistance payments.

Because identifying information for final recipients of payments provided at the state and local levels was not available at the federal level and not practical for us to obtain, we selected one major federal program that disburses funds at the local level for a case study analysis. For this case study, we selected the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Section 8 tenant-based low-income housing program, a program classified as a direct assistance program, which provides rental assistance to low-income families by providing supplemental rental payments directly to landlords participating in the rental assistance program. We obtained and analyzed an extract from HUD’s Public Housing Information Center (PIC) database, which HUD represented to be the most complete data source available on low-income assisted households in HUD’s public housing or voucher programs, that contained identifying information on landlords who participated in HUD’s program during fiscal years 2005 and 2006.

2006, unpaid assessments files and electronically matched these files with the various grant and direct assistance recipients identified in the above databases using the taxpayer identification number. To avoid overstating the amount of unpaid taxes owed by grant recipients and to capture only significant tax debt, we excluded tax debts meeting specific criteria. The criteria we used to exclude tax debts are as follows: tax debts IRS classified as compliance assessments or memo accounts for financial reporting, tax debts from calendar year 2006 tax periods, and grant recipients with total unpaid taxes of $100 or less.

The criteria above were used to exclude tax debts that might be under dispute or generally duplicative or invalid and tax debts that are incurred after the dates the entities received grant payments. Compliance assessments or memo accounts were excluded because these taxes have neither been agreed to by the taxpayers nor affirmed by the court, or these taxes could be invalid or duplicative of other taxes already reported. We excluded tax debts from calendar year 2006 tax periods to eliminate tax debt that may involve matters that are routinely resolved between the taxpayers and IRS, with the taxes paid or abated within a short period. We also excluded tax debts of $100 or less because they are insignificant for the purpose of determining the extent of taxes owed by grant recipients. personal bank data, entities established to hide assets, etc.) that the recipient individuals or entities, including key officials, own or receive.

To determine actions federal agencies take to prevent individuals and organizations with significant unpaid federal taxes from either being approved for or receiving grant or direct assistance payments, we reviewed governmentwide and agency-specific policies and procedures for awarding grants and benefits from the respective programs. We also interviewed officials from the Office of Management and Budget and the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Homeland Security, HHS, and HUD on whether tax debts are considered in their decisions to approve award applications. In addition, to test whether grant applicants properly disclosed their current tax delinquencies when submitting applications, we requested and reviewed the grant applications for our 14 cases that applied for grants.

We conducted our audit work from January 2007 through August 2007 in accordance with U.S. generally accepted government auditing standards, and we performed our investigative work in accordance with standards prescribed by the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency.

Data Reliability Assessment

For IRS unpaid assessments data, we relied on the work we performed during our annual audits of IRS’s financial statements. While our financial statement audits have identified some data reliability problems associated with the coding of some of the fields in IRS’s tax records, including errors and delays in recording taxpayer information and payments, we determined that the data were sufficiently reliable to address our report’s objectives. Our financial audit procedures, including the reconciliation of the value of unpaid taxes recorded in IRS’s master file to IRS’s general ledger, identified no material differences. information for reporting on program performance under the Government Performance and Results Act. We held discussions with HUD’s database administrators on input controls used to maintain data integrity for the data elements we used for our analysis and with HUD programmers to discuss the programming code HUD used to extract the data we used. We also performed electronic testing of the data elements we used and performed limited verification tests.

Based on our discussions with agency officials, our review of agency documents, and our own testing, we concluded that the data elements used for this report were sufficiently reliable for our purposes.

Appendix II: Grant and Direct Assistance Recipients with Unpaid Taxes

Table 1 provides data on 10 detailed case studies. Table 2 below provides details of the remaining 10 organizations and individuals we selected as case studies. As with the 10 cases discussed in the body of this report, we found evidence of abusive and potential criminal activity related to the federal tax system during our audit and investigations of these 10 case studies.

Appendix III: Comments from the Internal Revenue Service

Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

Staff Acknowledgments

In addition to the individual named above, Erika Axelson, James Berry, Ray Bush, Bill Cordrey, Kenneth Hill, Aaron Holling, Wil Holloway, Mitchell Karpman, John Kelly, Rick Kusman, Tram Le, John Ledford, Barbara Lewis, Andrew McIntosh, Eduvina Rodriguez, John Ryan, Steve Sebastian, Robert Sharpe, Barry Shillito, Pat Tobo, and Matthew Valenta made key contributions to this report.

Related GAO Products

Tax Compliance: Thousands of Organizations Exempt from Federal Income Tax Owe Nearly $1 Billion in Payroll and Other Taxes. GAO-07- 1090T. Washington, D.C.: July 24, 2007.

Tax Compliance: Thousands of Organizations Exempt from Federal Income Tax Owe Nearly $1 Billion in Payroll and Other Taxes. GAO-07- 563. Washington, D.C.: June 29, 2007.

Tax Compliance: Thousands of Federal Contractors Abuse the Federal Tax System. GAO-07-742T. Washington, D.C.: April 19, 2007.

Medicare: Thousands of Medicare Part B Providers Abuse the Federal Tax System. GAO-07-587T. Washington, D.C.: March 20, 2007.

Internal Revenue Service: Procedural Changes Could Enhance Tax Collections. GAO-07-26. Washington, D.C.: November 15, 2006.

Tax Debt: Some Combined Federal Campaign Charities Owe Payroll and Other Federal Taxes. GAO-06-887. Washington, D.C.: July 28, 2006.

Tax Debt: Some Combined Federal Campaign Charities Owe Payroll and Other Federal Taxes. GAO-06-755T. Washington, D.C.: May 25, 2006.

Financial Management: Thousands of GSA Contractors Abuse the Federal Tax System. GAO-06-492T. Washington, D.C.: March 14, 2006.

Financial Management: Thousands of Civilian Agency Contractors Abuse the Federal Tax System with Little Consequence. GAO-05-683T. Washington, D.C.: June 16, 2005.

Financial Management: Thousands of Civilian Agency Contractors Abuse the Federal Tax System with Little Consequence. GAO-05-637. Washington, D.C.: June 16, 2005.

Financial Management: Some DOD Contractors Abuse the Federal Tax System with Little Consequence. GAO-04-414T. Washington, D.C.: February 12, 2004.

Financial Management: Some DOD Contractors Abuse the Federal Tax System with Little Consequence. GAO-04-95. Washington, D.C.: February 12, 2004.