Nearly 30% of federal employees owe $6.3 billion in unpaid taxes, investigation finds

A tax fraud investigation headed by the House Oversight Committee has found that 571,000 federal employees — out of the approximately two million currently working for the government — are not paying their share of income taxes.

The half a million number is continuing to surge, and tax debt among federal workers has grown 32% since 2021. The number of government employees who aren’t paying taxes has increased by 43% in three years, according to House Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who serves as chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The committee announced its investigation launch on Wednesday.

“I don’t think anyone in America knew about it, including myself,” Comer told the Just the News, No Noise TV show. “The people who have made their living and their retirement off of our hard-earned tax dollars aren’t paying their taxes.”

50,000 federal employees have not filed taxes for more than 2 years

Comer wants the IRS to make an example of these employees. A recent Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report that unveiled the fraud also found that roughly 50,000 federal employees haven't filed a tax return for two or more years, including 14,000 workers who make more than $100,000 annually and about 122 people who didn't file taxes for eight or more years while still receiving taxpayer-funded salaries.

The IRS sent delinquency notices to about 427,000 current and retired federal employees in June and July 2025. However, just 4,700 paid their outstanding tax liabilities in full, the report states.

Comer said that if federal employees think they can get away with tax fraud, others — including those who Vice President J.D. Vance is currently targeting — are also not going to pay taxes.

Following President Trump’s appointment of Vance as a “fraud czar” in early April, the Vice President has helmed a federal task force working to uncover fraud across the country. So far, he's revealed that hospices and health agencies in Los Angeles accounted for around $600 million in public funds fraud (and promptly shut it down), referred Congress’s evidence that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison failed to act against mass welfare fraud to the Justice Department for investigation, and has uncovered other operations in Maine.

“We will not stop until every hard-earned taxpayer dollar goes toward the honest Americans who deserve them,” a Vance spokesperson said in April.

Comer sees the federal employees' tax fraud as an epidemic: “We have a national debt that continues to skyrocket.”

Garnishing federal workers' wages a possibility

He thinks there’s a lot of opportunity in this situation to hold the transgressors accountable for not contributing to the tax dollars “that pay their salary and provide their retirement benefits.”

The long-term fix to Comer is garnishing the employees’ wages and terminating their jobs. It isn't an easy feat to fire these employees, which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk figured out quickly with the now-disbanded Department of Government Efficiency. Since federal employees are protected by the civil service, similar to a tenured teacher, their employment is fairly difficult to terminate.

Garnishing the workers' wages — which Comer is calling for — means the government would withhold a portion of their paychecks to pay off the debt they accumulated by not filing and/or paying their taxes.

“Your wages get garnished if you’re a deadbeat dad,” he said, citing child support payment requirements. “These are deadbeat taxpayers, and to make it worse, they work for the federal government.”

Comer wants the transgressors’ names to be published and records opened.

“Their friends and neighbors and relatives and people they attend church with, they need to know that this federal employee is not even bothering to file a tax return," he said.

Katherine Pugh is a reporter for Just the News. Follow her on X for more coverage.