I mentioned earlier, the System for Award Management that any prospective contractor or grantee is required to go into the system and certify that they either did not owe or had not been notified of any delinquent federal taxes. So they rely on self-certifications that are made by the contractors and grantees within the system. Latoya George: So federal contracting and grant officers do not have direct access to taxpayer information. The people that award the grants, are awarded the contract, how do they know this tax status of an entity? Tom Temin: And is there any way that you’re aware of for contracting officers to be aware of this down to the individual or grant maker I should say, since we’re including grants and federal contracts. And then we compare that to IRS records that detail the type of tax, the age and the delinquency status of individual and business taxpayer accounts.

So we took the information from those databases. There’s also grant information that’s listed on a publicly available website,. And also the contract data that’s listed on the federal procurement data system. Latoya George: We did we actually use information in the System for Award Management that contains the contract data. Tom Temin: And how do you go about coming up with the figures? It seems like you’ve got a lot of different databases to compare here. Latoya George: Well, I will say that not my exact area of expertise to say, by month-by-month or even year-by-year, that was included in our scope, but this is something that Congress and IRS are aware of. Tom Temin: And its been an ongoing problem for many years, is it your sense that each report it gets a little worse? Or is it just a steady state problem that bedevils the government? Tom Temin: Yeah, so it’s at least a year and almost two years. And for the grantees, we found that average of 474 days. I will say that we did identify that the average of tax delinquency for the contractors was about 607 days. And so once it is reported in the system, then these grantees and contractors have been notified. Latoya George: So IRS has standards in their processes, and we didn’t go into that matter of detail in our scope, but they are notifying these contractors and grantees of their tax delinquency. And when the report says delinquent taxes, does that mean they’re way behind or a year behind? Or is there a specific meaning of delinquency here? Tom Temin: Yeah, so that’s a pretty substantial number, almost a billion dollars. They received over that time period $32.9 billion in federal awards while owing $891 million in delinquent federal taxes. Latoya George: So we identified 3,978 entities and just included contractors and grantees. How many contractors? How much did they get in contracts, and what do they owe in taxes? You looked at awards between I guess, October 2018 and December 2019, the latest period you could measure. Tom Temin: Tell us the scope of the problem. Insight by Axonius: CISOs from Justice, Labor and USCIS share helpful pointers from their zero trust efforts so far, and a CISA expert offers insights on implementing continuous diagnostic and mitigation capabilities, in a new Federal News Network Executive Survey. For the most recent figures, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke to the director in the office of audits at the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, Latoya George. The IRS has been making progress towards eliminating a long-standing problem, namely companies who are delinquent in their federal taxes, but that nevertheless received federal contracts. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne. For the most recent figures, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke to the director in the office of audits at the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, Latoya George.īest listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne.

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