Happy Tax Day Enid!
It's April 15th and that means it's time to fork over your hard earned cash to the Federal Government. Are you trying to decide if you should report every little penny that you made? Have you reported your garage sale earnings? Your bingo winnings? Any prizes that you've won? Read this and see how motivated you are about filing your taxes this year...
Federal government employees spent millions of dollars of taxpayer money using their government purchase cards to pay for questionable items such as Internet dating services, Brooks Brothers suits, expensive steak dinners, personalized iPods, computers, and more, and much of the expensive electronic equipment has been lost or stolen, according to Congressional investigators.
It's fairly easy to misuse government purchase cards, which are like normal Visa and MasterCard credit cards, according to the Government Accountability Office. Investigators examined purchase card transactions made between July 2005 and June 2006 and estimated that for 41 percent of them, government cardholders did not follow proper procedures to prevent waste, fraud and abuse.
In one egregious case, a Forest Service employee wrote convenience checks to her boyfriend on her purchase card account, embezzling $642,000 over six years, according to a GAO report published Wednesday. The money "was used for personal expenditures, such as gambling, car loan and mortgage payments, and other retail purchases," according to the report.
And in many cases, things that weren't tied down simply disappeared. Investigators noted that government agencies were unable to locate 458 of 1,058 expensive and "easily pilferable" items, such as iPods, digital cameras, laptop computers, and sometimes even larger items, accounting for $1.8 million in missing merchandise from the $2.7 million sample. The largest was described as "256 items making up 16 server configurations, each of which cost nearly $100,000."
The report gave several more examples of improper, fraudulent or abusive transactions:
* A postmaster at USPS used his government purchase card to fraudulently subscribe to two Internet dating services over 15 consecutive months (April 2004 through October 2006). The monthly charges for these dating services were the only charges that appeared on the cardholders monthly statements during this period; yet each of these charges was authorized and paid for by USPS. The cardholder paid restitution of over $1,100 but faced no disciplinary action for this fraud.
* One USDA cardholder used year-end funds to acquire a Toyota Sienna and a Toyota Land Cruiser totaling nearly $80,000.
* USPS paid over $13,000 for 81 conference attendees to dine at an upscale steak restaurant in Orlando, Florida, in 2006. The dinner, which cost over $160 per person, included steaks, crab, appetizers, and over $3,000 in alcoholic beverages purchased over a 5-hour period. We define this transaction as abusive.
* At the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a cardholder used the government purchase card to acquire two 60GB iPods. Although NASA officials maintained that the iPods were essential for official data storage, we found that the cardholder personalized the iPods with the requester's and agency's names and used the iPods to store songs and music videos. Although the iPods had some business files on them, we concluded that the purchase was abusive because other data storage devices without video and audio capabilities were available at lower costs.
-- Governmentwide Purchase Cards: Actions Needed to Strengthen Internal Controls to Reduce Fraudulent, Improper, and Abusive Purchases (PDF)
Now get out there and pay those taxes with a smile on your face.
Federal government employees spent millions of dollars of taxpayer money using their government purchase cards to pay for questionable items such as Internet dating services, Brooks Brothers suits, expensive steak dinners, personalized iPods, computers, and more, and much of the expensive electronic equipment has been lost or stolen, according to Congressional investigators.
It's fairly easy to misuse government purchase cards, which are like normal Visa and MasterCard credit cards, according to the Government Accountability Office. Investigators examined purchase card transactions made between July 2005 and June 2006 and estimated that for 41 percent of them, government cardholders did not follow proper procedures to prevent waste, fraud and abuse.
In one egregious case, a Forest Service employee wrote convenience checks to her boyfriend on her purchase card account, embezzling $642,000 over six years, according to a GAO report published Wednesday. The money "was used for personal expenditures, such as gambling, car loan and mortgage payments, and other retail purchases," according to the report.
And in many cases, things that weren't tied down simply disappeared. Investigators noted that government agencies were unable to locate 458 of 1,058 expensive and "easily pilferable" items, such as iPods, digital cameras, laptop computers, and sometimes even larger items, accounting for $1.8 million in missing merchandise from the $2.7 million sample. The largest was described as "256 items making up 16 server configurations, each of which cost nearly $100,000."
The report gave several more examples of improper, fraudulent or abusive transactions:
* A postmaster at USPS used his government purchase card to fraudulently subscribe to two Internet dating services over 15 consecutive months (April 2004 through October 2006). The monthly charges for these dating services were the only charges that appeared on the cardholders monthly statements during this period; yet each of these charges was authorized and paid for by USPS. The cardholder paid restitution of over $1,100 but faced no disciplinary action for this fraud.
* One USDA cardholder used year-end funds to acquire a Toyota Sienna and a Toyota Land Cruiser totaling nearly $80,000.
* USPS paid over $13,000 for 81 conference attendees to dine at an upscale steak restaurant in Orlando, Florida, in 2006. The dinner, which cost over $160 per person, included steaks, crab, appetizers, and over $3,000 in alcoholic beverages purchased over a 5-hour period. We define this transaction as abusive.
* At the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a cardholder used the government purchase card to acquire two 60GB iPods. Although NASA officials maintained that the iPods were essential for official data storage, we found that the cardholder personalized the iPods with the requester's and agency's names and used the iPods to store songs and music videos. Although the iPods had some business files on them, we concluded that the purchase was abusive because other data storage devices without video and audio capabilities were available at lower costs.
-- Governmentwide Purchase Cards: Actions Needed to Strengthen Internal Controls to Reduce Fraudulent, Improper, and Abusive Purchases (PDF)
Now get out there and pay those taxes with a smile on your face.


















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