Word: gsa
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...Jewish orthodox school he was looking to build in Maryland for his children to attend. Abramoff wanted to get land from the government, and Safavian, as chief of staff for the General Services Administration, the agency that controls government property, advised him that he should get Congress to order GSA to sell or lease the land to the school, according to e-mails released last month by the Justice department. Safavian later helped Abramoff on the drafting of a letter seeking the land from the government...
...review of Internal Revenue Service records and GSA contracts for 2004 and 2005 found that about 10% of the vendors under contract with the agency, or over 3,800, had cheated on their taxes. In most cases, the scofflaws didn't pay their corporate income tax or company owners lined their pockets with the IRS payroll taxes they'd collected from their employees for Social Security, Medicare and individual income taxes. One contractor who provided $1 million worth of security services to the federal government from 2003 to 2005 also had unpaid taxes of over $9 million; the owner...
...Fixing the problem isn't apparently that easy, either. The GAO report noted that federal law "does not require GSA contracting officers to examine tax debt when awarding contracts." And even if a contracting officer wanted to check the tax status of a vendor he'd have a difficult time doing so because federal law also restricts his access to IRS tax records, according...
...business with the Pentagon that owed $3 billion in back taxes. Since that report in 2004, the Pentagon and other federal agencies have increased the amount of back taxes recovered from contractors by over 600%, according to Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, chairman of the Investigations Subcommittee. A GSA spokesman says his agency "takes the issue of unpaid contractor taxes very seriously and all federal contractors should be held to high standards." He said GSA is working with the IRS to improve the crosschecking of contractor records with tax information. Even so, Coleman concludes: "It is simply unacceptable that...
...cheating on taxes isn't just an easy way for companies to line their pockets - it's also good business. The report points out that "GSA contractors with tax debts have an unfair advantage in costs when competing with contractors that pay their taxes." Not remitting payroll taxes to the IRS, for example, can save the cheater 15% in expenses so "these contractors could offer prices for their goods and services that are lower than their tax compliant competitors," according to the report. Which means that in holding out for the lowest bidder, the federal government may well unwittingly...