Should we fire Federal employees who get behind on their taxes?

By Tom Quiner

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rzLA51Hf_L8]

Claire McCaskill says yes.

The Missouri Senator, a Democrat, is co-sponsoring a bill that would cause federal employees to lose their jobs if they don’t keep up on their taxes. She projects the bill would save tax payers a billion dollars.

Evidently, Capital Hill workers are more lax in paying their federal taxes than the general population. Four percent of Senate employees owe an average of $12,787 on federal taxes. In the House, the average owed is $15,498.

A press release put out by the bill’s sponsors says:

“This legislation will save taxpayers at least $1 billion by requiring the Internal Revenue Service to collect unpaid federal income taxes from federal employees. The bill requires all federal employees to be current on their federal income taxes or be fired from their jobs.”

Senator McCaskill is a numbers person. The former Missouri State Auditor knows about audits, about the need to keep taxpayers accountable.

This raises an interesting question. Isn’t Senator McCaskill a federal employee? Her paycheck comes from us, the taxpayers. And yet as reported in Quiner’s Diner yesterday, she has admitted she didn’t pay $287,273 in taxes she should have.

She has been haunted by other tax improprieties over the years prompting her to claim,”We paid every dime of our taxes” in the 2006 campaign ad posted above.

Senator McCaskill should be applauded for demanding that federal employees be held accountable for paying their taxes like the rest of us.

Should we apply the same standard to the Democrat from Missouri?