WASHINGTON: Thousands of companies that cashed in on President Barack Obama's
economic stimulus package owed the government millions in unpaid taxes, congressional investigators have found.
The
Government Accountability Office, in a report being released Tuesday, said at least 3,700
government contractors and nonprofit organizations that received more than $24 billion from the stimulus effort owed $757 million in back taxes as of Sept. 30, 2009, the end of the budget year.
The report said the tax delinquents accounted for nearly 6 percent of the 63,000 contractors and grantees examined and cautioned that the real number might be higher because the known
tax debt does not measure such factors as income underreporting.
Among the examples was an engineering firm that received a $100,000 stimulus act contract but owed $6 million in taxes. The IRS called it "an extreme case of noncompliance." A social services nonprofit that received more than $1 million in stimulus funds owed taxes of $2 million.
The GAO referred those two cases and 13 others to the IRS for further investigation.
Maybe the stimulus $ should have gone to Social Security and Medicare funds to pay back the $ taxpayers had paid into the "lockbox". Since it did not create any meaningful # of jobs, and we have to pay it back anyway; at least this would have cut back on the # of times we would have to pay for legitimate benefits...unlike Medicaid which is an entitlement. One more "good job Joe Biden".
ReplyDeleteSeems to me that The Government Accountability Office should have checked on the companys BEFORE they gave them money.
ReplyDeleteThe government accountability office is an illusion.
ReplyDelete