Federal employees owe $6.3 billion in back taxes. The only agency allowed to see the names owes the least.

The finding, in one paragraph: the federal government's own workforce is falling behind on the taxes that pay its salaries, the IRS's program for tracking this has watched the number grow every year it measured, the law simultaneously mandates accountability inside one department and enforces blindness everywhere else — and in the six months the numbers hit their record, the IRS cut the staff working the caseload from 242 people to 121.

Two documents, both read directly.▸ The first is the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration's May 6, 2026 report, Federal Employee and Retiree Trends Show Increased Tax Noncompliance (2026-3S0-023), a review of the IRS's Federal Employee/Retiree Delinquency Initiative — FERDI, the program the IRS built in 1993 to keep the government's own payroll tax-compliant. The second is the June 25, 2026 letter from House Oversight Chairman James Comer to IRS chief executive Frank Bisignano, which converts TIGTA's findings into a formal investigation with a document demand.

From $4.8 billion in FY2021 to $6.3 billion in FY2024 — up $1.5 billion, or 32 percent — while the federal workforce shrank by less than one percent.▸ Among current civilian employees alone, the delinquency rate rose from 4.9 to 6.9 percent. TIGTA found roughly 50,000 civilian employees who had not filed a return for multiple years, including nearly 14,000 earning $100,000 or more — and at least 122 people who, while collecting federal salaries, had not filed for eight or more years. TIGTA referred those 122 to Criminal Investigation itself, in its words, "because the IRS's Collection function had not."

The same tax code argues with itself, and the delinquency table records the outcome.▸ The Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 requires the IRS to terminate its own employees for willful failure to file. But Internal Revenue Code §6103 prohibits the IRS from telling any other agency which of its employees are delinquent — with one exception: the Department of the Treasury. Every agency but one is legally blind to its own non-filers. The natural experiment has been running for years, and here is its result:

Treasury, the one department whose employer can see the names, runs 2.4 percent.▸ The Postal Service — which accounts for a third of all repeat non-filers, nearly 15,000 people — runs 10.1 percent. The Office of Personnel Management has proposed rules allowing agencies to fast-track dismissal over unresolved tax debt; the Comer letter notes the obvious defect: with §6103 in place, agencies "would have to rely on other methods, such as self-reporting" — that is, on tax dodgers turning themselves in.

What the IRS did do, per both documents: in June and July 2025 it mailed 427,000 delinquency notices to noncompliant federal employees and retirees — a blast the IRS told TIGTA was one-time, not to be repeated.▸ Within 30 days, 59,000 recipients made a payment; 4,700 paid in full; $58 million came in. Against a $6.3 billion balance, that is nine-tenths of one cent on the dollar. Meanwhile, between January and July 2025, the number of employees working the FERDI inventory fell from 242 to 121 — a 50 percent cut — even as the IRS told its auditors it "anticipates that the delinquency rates will decrease in the coming years." A levy tool exists: the Federal Payment Levy Program can take up to 15 percent of a federal salary. The committee's first two demands are, in effect, how often have you actually used it.

The Comer letter set a deadline of July 9, 2026 — yesterday — for the IRS to produce FPLP referral counts, levy request numbers, and recovery totals, plus a staff briefing.▸ TIGTA's report, for its part, made no recommendations; it is "information only," its central policy idea (amend §6103 so agencies can see their own delinquents) having been sent to Treasury's Office of Tax Policy after a 2023 audit — which, the report notes, "has not provided any feedback, guidance, or responses."

All figures are from the two documents cited in-line: TIGTA report 2026-3S0-023 (May 6, 2026) and the House Oversight Committee's June 25, 2026 letter, both read directly. Delinquency excludes employees in installment agreements or pending offers in compromise.