Truthout: Pentagon Contractors Owe $7.7 Billion in Unpaid Taxes

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/043007J.shtml

Pentagon Contractors Owe $7.7 Billion in Unpaid Taxes
By Thomas D. Williams
t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 30 April 2007

A federal watchdog agency insists that its investigations clearly show the US government is facing serious long-term funding shortfalls, while federal contractors, doctors and medical suppliers, regularly receiving federal Medicare money, owe billions in unpaid taxes.

Earlier this month, Comptroller General David M. Walker of the US General Accountability Office opened one of his critical summary presentations to a Defense Department acquisition conference with: "The federal government is on a 'burning platform,' and the status quo way of doing business is unacceptable...."

He cited "past fiscal trends and significant long-range challenges; selected trends ... having no boundaries;" outlandish government funding demands due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina; outdated federal policies and practices; and finally, "rising public expectations" for results.

Within the past six years, said Walker, the government's long-term financial exposures in debt, health and Social Security have jumped 147 percent to $50.5 trillion. If this trend continues, said the GAO report, federal spending will need to be cut by 60 percent and taxes will have to double to balance the budget in the year 2040. To close off this sweeping gap, the economy would demand double-digit growth for every single year for 75 years, he said.

Meanwhile, a recent GAO inquiry reveals that about 113,800 contractors working for a variety of federal agencies, including the Pentagon and the General Services Administration, have built up $7.7 billion in unpaid taxes. This matches untidily with a March GAO report saying that more than 21,000 doctors, health professionals or medical suppliers, collecting billions in federal Medicare dollars, simultaneously owed more than $1 billion in federal income taxes. Federal agencies either have to rely on their hired contractors and medical providers to disclose what they owe the IRS, or dig out the data elsewhere in public record disclosures of the debts, said the GAO report. It goes on to explain that the IRS does not file public liens on the property of all tax debtors, nor does it have a central file where federal agencies can obtain those liens.

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[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. 50,500,000,000,000 kicks

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Ain't it great to live off of someone else's money? And to get government contracts and not have to

pay taxes? "Taxes are for the little people."

[progressoid]

3. Ya, but what about those welfare mothers?

[jwirr]

4. IRS should take it out of their wages! Like they do for back child

support and school loans. It is only fair.