Biden's IRS hired 87,000 new agents and promised to go after the rich.
Today's inspector general report just revealed who they were actually protecting.
What the inspector general found inside the IRS payroll is worse than anyone reported.
215,000 Federal Employees Owe $2.1 Billion in Unpaid Taxes
As of 2024, 215,000 federal employees – 6.9% of the entire U.S. government workforce – were delinquent on their federal taxes.
Fifty thousand of those workers blew off their returns for multiple consecutive years.
More than a thousand skipped filing at least six times across their careers.
The inspector general identified 102 cases where a federal employee earned income for eight straight years and never once filed a return.
Twenty employees went nine years or longer – collecting government paychecks, building toward government pensions, paying nothing back.
Not one of those cases had been referred to the IRS criminal investigations division as of late last year.
The inspector general made the referrals itself.
Add in retired federal workers and the delinquency count hits 571,000 – up 43% in just three years – owing a combined $6.3 billion.
USPS and VA Employees Lead the Federal Tax Delinquency Rankings
The U.S. Postal Service topped the list – 10% of its workforce delinquent, $570 million in unpaid taxes outstanding.
The same postal service Democrats weaponized to push mass mail-in voting in 2020 employs a workforce where one in ten workers stiffs the treasury.
The Veterans Affairs Department came in at 7.3% delinquency – nearly $380 million owed by the same bureaucracy that has spent decades failing veterans.
Civilian Defense Department employees checked in above 7%.
Homeland Security above 5%.
These are the agencies most insulated from accountability, most protected by federal unions, and most resistant to the reforms Trump has pushed since taking office.
One Rule for You. Another Rule for Them.
Biden's IRS used $80 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act to dramatically expand its enforcement operation.
House Republicans identified an estimated 600,000 new audits on Americans making less than $75,000 as a result of that hiring surge.
The same agency responding to 215,000 delinquent federal workers sent reminder letters.
Not liens.
Not levies.
Not criminal referrals.
Letters.
The IRS sent 427,000 reminder letters last summer.
Fifty-nine thousand people made payments totaling $58 million – roughly $983 per person on a $2.1 billion tab.
The IRS called that result encouraging.
The inspector general made the criminal referrals the IRS refused to make.
How Senate Democrats Killed the Bill That Would Have Fired Tax Delinquent Federal Employees
The House solved this problem in 2012.
The Federal Employee Tax Accountability Act passed 263 to 114, with Republicans and dozens of Democrats voting yes.
It went to the Senate, where Harry Reid's Democratic majority let it die without a vote.
Republicans brought it back in 2013.
Same result.
The bill was straightforward: federal employees with a serious tax lien filed against them would lose their government jobs.
Democrats called it unfair to workers facing financial hardship.
The workers being audited by those same employees apparently didn’t qualify for the same concern.
Senator Chuck Grassley spent two years demanding answers from the Biden IRS – why the FERDI delinquency reports went dark after 2015, why criminal referrals never came for workers who skipped filing nine straight years.
He got non-answers every time.
Under current law, only IRS employees face a statutory requirement to stay current on their taxes.
Every other agency – USPS, VA, DHS, DOD – has no binding obligation to act when their workers cheat.
Elon Musk's DOGE operation has spent eighteen months cutting the federal workforce and exposing what the protected class actually looked like from the inside.
This inspector general report is the paperwork.
Sources:
- Stephen Dinan, "215,000 federal workers were delinquent on their taxes," The Washington Times, May 11, 2026.
- "IRS Audit Finds 42,000 Feds Cheating on Taxes," The Washington Times, March 10, 2023.
- Senator Chuck Grassley, Letter to IRS Acting Commissioner Melanie Krause regarding FERDI delinquency data, April 2, 2025.
- House Ways and Means Committee, "Lack of IRS Plan to Protect Middle-Class Families from Increased Audits," October 2024.
- Senator Mike Braun and Senator Joni Ernst, FERDI Act introduction press release, February 2021.