A recent audit by the United States Treasury Department’s inspector general (IG) found that multiple employees of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) collectively owe around $50 million in back taxes.

According to the Daily Wire, the amount is owed by a total of over 3,800 individual employees, 2,000 of which have not yet established payment plans. At least 50 of these employees have worked for the IRS for five years or more.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration conducted the audit by reviewing 1,068 different cases where the IRS had taken disciplinary action against employees for tax-related offenses. The IG found that in most cases, the agency would hardly punish its own employees.

“76 employees were suspended. Most of these cases involved willful … cases resulting in the employee being suspended for less than 14 days,” the IG report reveals.

Out of 70 different cases where an IRS employee was found to have  “willfully” engaged in tax misconduct between October of 2021 and April of 2023, only 20 were actually fired. This was in direct contradiction with the law which states that all IRS employees who are found guilty of such offenses must be fired; the only thing that can prevent such terminations is direct intervention by the IRS commissioner himself.

Beyond the IRS, an estimated 150,000 federal employees ultimately owe money in back taxes, amounting to around $1.5 billion in owed revenue.

The audit was requested by Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who subsequently issued a statement after the results of the audit were publicized.

“Surely the irony and hypocrisy can’t be missed here: taxpayers are being forced to pay billions more to the IRS to audit America while the agency won’t even collect the tens of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes owed by its employees,” said Senator Ernst. She called on Commissioner Daniel Werfel to fire all offending employees, and to refer them for criminal prosecution.

In its own statement, the IRS falsely claimed that it had indeed enforced the law and taken all necessary disciplinary action.

“For certain offenses, including the willful failure to file a tax return and willful understatement of a Federal tax liability, IRS employees shall be terminated unless the IRS Commissioner decides to mitigate the penalty of termination,” the agency’s statement declared. “The Commissioner exercised this authority.”