WATCHDOG EXCLUSIVE! IRS doles out $92 million in employee bonuses

More than $92 million in bonuses averaging $5,500 per employee have been handed out by IRS executives to thousands of the tax agency’s employees since 2009, according to data obtained by The Washington Examiner.

The average annual salary of the employees receiving at least one bonus during the four-year period between 2009 and 2012 was slightly less than $94,000, indicating that the extra tax dollars mostly went to managers and executives eligible for performance-based incentives.

The IRS’s overall workforce includes more than 97,000 employees. According to the data, which the agency provided in response to the newspaper’s Freedom of Information Act request, 16,910 of those named got at least a nominal bonus, including one in Ogden, Utah, who received two cents.

The agency also withheld the names of an unknown number of IRS law enforcement officials who received bonuses, though it did release the amounts of the bonuses paid to them.

The largest individual bonus was for former IRS Commissioner Richard E. Byrd for $60,270.

On Wednesday, The Washington Examiner reported that Lois Lerner, the IRS executive who made public her agency’s improperly singling out of conservative Tea Party groups seeking non-profit exemptions was given more than $42,000 in bonuses during the four years.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/watchdog-exclusive-irs-doles-out-92-million-in-employee-bonuses/article/2529852

This is taxpayer money we are talking about. Who says they should get bonuses?

Your money:

"The news that Lerner, who earned $177,000 in 2011 and 2012 according to reports, would be placed on paid leave touched off a series of media reports detailing the difficulty of firing federal employees. Managers may fire employees, but federal workers have the opportunity to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. In Lerner's case, as National Review reported, she could point to a lack of disciplinary record.

Former acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller, whom the president ousted, called Lerner "exceptional" when he announced her promotion in 2005, for example.

"Federal employees' job security is so great that workers in many agencies are more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off or fired," reported USA Today after a 2011 study of federal employment statistics.
http://news.yahoo.com/why-hard-fire-low-performing-government-employee-171011126.html

I can't see getting a "bonus" for doing what she's paid to do—which is—The People's Business.

Agreed.

It's the same thing that happens on little league teams. Everybody gets awarded even if they suck.

Yes, as we have said before, bad is good and good is bad. Reward bad.

I was going to say,"They get rewarded for just showing up". Then I thought? ... I wonder what their work attendance is? We probably don't want to know that.