Politics

Income tax-delinquent FCC employees owe more than $1 million

Josh Peterson Tech Editor
Font Size:

While President Obama repeats his campaign talking point about high-income private sector employees allegedly not paying their “fair share” in taxes, many government employees at the Federal Communications Commission have failed to pay what they already owe under current tax law.

The Daily Caller has obtained a July 13 letter from Rep. Marsha Blackburn to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, in which the Tennessee Republican wrote that according to Internal Revenue Service data, FCC employees’ income tax delinquency rate rose from 2.74 percent to 3.88 percent from 2008 to 2010. During that same period, she added, unpaid federal income taxes owed by the agency’s staff rose from $544,917 to $1,084,544.

And according to a May 2 memo sent by FCC Chief Human Capital Officer Bonita Tingley to all agency employees, also obtained by TheDC, “the IRS reported that as of September 30, 2011, 3.59 percent of FCC employees had some type of Federal income tax delinquency.” That rate was down only slightly from the 2010 figure.

“Overall,” Tingley disclosed, “the average delinquency rate for civilian employees of Federal agencies and departments was 3.6 percent.”

The FCC’s website discloses that it presently has 1,993 employees. In 2010 the business intelligence website Hoovers reported that the agency employed 1,930 people. That works out to 75 FCC staffers owing Uncle Sam an average of $14,483 each in unpaid income taxes

The number of those FCC employees earning salaries of $150,000 or more rose from 46 in 2008 to 431 in 2009, and then again to 535 in 2011.

Florida Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart noted this FCC salary shift during a March 19 House appropriations subcommittee hearing — the same hearing during which he questioned Genachowski about the agency’s lack of transparency with respect to large numbers of Freedom of Information Act requests. (RELATED: FOIA data suggests FCC more secretive than CIA)

While Genachowski’s $346.7 million budget proposal for the 2013 fiscal year  — a 2 percent increase over fiscal 2012 — did not call for a hiring increase, it included information covering the high pay rate of his agency staff.

Genachowski, forced to defend his salary structure during the March hearing, explained that the high pay rate of some employees reflected, in part, an effort to properly compensate first-rate talent. The increasing complex technical and legal challenges faced by the agency, he said, required the FCC to employ engineers, economists and others with advanced degrees.

He also said the FCC’s agency’s high retention rate could explain part of the increase in the number of employees earning more than $150,000 per year.

In an exchange with Genachowski during a February 16 House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee hearing, Blackburn connected the FCC’s tax delinquency with President Obama’s campaign strategy.

“It seems that with the majority of your employees making over $125,000 a year,” she said, “and with there being a growing percentage of them not paying their taxes, I would think that since the president has as one of his goals for people to pay their fair share, that we would appreciate if this is an issue that could be addressed.”

Genachowski agreed that he would look into the matter.

The FCC, however, continued its streak of slow responses to sitting members of Congress, taking nearly six months to respond to Blackburn’s inquiry. Her July 13 letter was a reminder to Genachowski that the issue was still unsettled

Jill Pender, the FCC’s Senior Counsel and Associate Director of Legislative Affairs, emailed Blackburn’s staff after receiving the letter.

“[P]eople experience financial problems for a myriad range of reasons, from being underwater on their mortgages to having to assist elderly parents or handle unexpected medical costs, or just poor personal budget planning,” according to Pender’s email, which TheDC obtained late Friday afternoon.

Blackburn told TheDC that with “a majority of FCC employees making more than $125,000 a year we need to ensure the FCC’s tax delinquency trends are fully reversed.”

“And if it takes the FCC three requests from Congress before the agency will release basic information about their employees’ tax delinquency rates,” she said, “imagine how private sector job creators feel when trying to gain information about how to interpret and comply with the agency’s maze of rules and regulations.”

The FCC did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller’s request for comment.

Follow Josh on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel