Are they asking for a pay cut, or cutting out the middle man?
Are you sitting down? A recently released report from the IRS revealed that 279,381 federal employees owed a combined $3.42 billion in taxes in 2010. That means the average tax-delinquent fed owed $12,258.
Horrifying as these numbers may be, we can be somewhat comforted in the fact that the overall delinquency rate of 2.85%, which is down from 2.89% the prior year. In fact, the IRS report breaks down the numbers by department.
The "winner?" Not terribly surprising, the Department of the Treasury had less than 1% of its 123,000 workers found to be behind in their taxes. Hats off to them.
On the other hand, the Advisory Committee on Historic Preservation's 53 employees come in at 9.43% delinquency rate. I didn't even know such a committee existed, but now I do. Apparently the upkeep on all those markers that share the rich insight with all interested passers-by that "in 1872, absolutely nothing happened here," is such a demoralizing career choice that they feel justified in not paying the taxes that pay their salaries.
In fact, it's kind of odd, when you think about it, that federal workers have to pay taxes at all, or at least the same rate as the rest of us. Say Fred the Fed makes a nice round salary of $100,000, of which he is expected to fork over 25% to the government--his employer. That $25,000 of Fred's money goes into the tax coffers, mingles with other monies, and over the next year comes back to him with seventy-five thousand of its friends, only to repeat the cycle again come the next April 15. Wouldn't it make more sense to to pay Fred $75k, tax-free, and cut the entropic losses on the cycle of income and tax?
Yes. Mathematically, it would seem more sane. Politically, however, it would never go over for public employees to pay zero tax while the private sector is saddled with the burden of supporting them, even if those public employees earned commensurately less in "pre-taxed" income.
