Federal contractors owe over $5B in delinquent taxes

Presidential memorandum of 20JAN10

...reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) state that Federal contracts are awarded to tens of thousands of companies with serious tax delinquencies. The total amount in unpaid taxes owed by these contracting companies is estimated to be more than $5 billion...

...I also direct the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, working with the Secretary of the Treasury and other agency heads, to evaluate practices of contracting officers and debarring officials in response to contractors' certifications of serious tax delinquencies and to provide me, within 90 days, recommendations on process improvements to ensure these contractors are not awarded new contracts, including a plan to make contractor certifications available in a Government-wide database, as is already being done with other information on contractors...

If there were (taking a SWAG) 50,000 delinquent contractors owing $5B, that would come to $100,000 each on average. I'd guess most (again a SWAG) are probably smaller local contractors who wouldn't be able to come up with $100K if you put a gun to their heads. My prediction would be the public takes it in the shorts on at least (SWAG) 80% of that owed tax.

posted by Purp at 01:36 PM

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