Despite past admonitions, the Internal Revenue Service still has a ways to go in preventing the award of agency contracts to firms that owe back taxes, an agency watchdog has found.

“The IRS tax check process was not effective in identifying tax-delinquent contractors,” wrote the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration in a report dated July 20, 2016 but released last week. The IG called for “significant improvements” to the process.

In a sampling of 73 awards among 336 contracts of $250,000 or more from September 2012 through August 2014, auditors found that 21, or 29 percent, “did not have evidence that the contracting officer performed the required tax check on the winning bidders.” What’s more, contracting officers handling all 73 contracts documented no tax checks on competing bidders.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/oversight/2016/08/irs-falls-short-tracking-tax-delinquent-contractors/130723