Your Pay: Recent report states 80,000 DoD employees and contractors delinquent on taxes

More than 80,000 Defense Department employees and contractors with security clearance owe back taxes, a June 28 Government Accountability Office report says. GAO found that about 83,000 DoD employees and contractors who held or were determined eligible for secret, top secret, or sensitive compartmented information clearances had unpaid federal tax debt totaling more than $730 million as of June 30, 2012, the report says.

DoD reported to GAO that about 3.2 million civilian and military employees and contractors held or were approved for clearances from Jan. 1, 2006, to Dec. 31, 2011, the timeframe GAO used for the review. More than 5.1 million federal employees--both civilian and military--and contractors held a security clearance as of October 2013, GAO says.

About 40 percent of the DoD employees and contractors with security clearance owing back taxes had a repayment plan with the IRS in place as of June 2012, the report says. The tax debt owed by those on a repayment plan was approximately $262 million. The median debt amount owed was about $2,700, and tax debts ranged from a minimum of about $100 to millions of dollars, GAO says. Download Report ⇒