I worked a seasonal job for the (US) federal government about a year ago, and I just received a letter in the mail stating I erroneously received a lump sum for an annual leave payout. Whether or not this is legitimate or not, or just pure incompetence by the agency is neither here nor there. It got me to thinking though – If the feds send out “accidental” payments to be reimbursed, at face value it seems they're just morons. I don't argue that buuuut, what if – now hear me out – what if – hypothetically – they send them on purpose. I'd bet the majority of people just pay it back, no matter how difficult it is to get the money, just to get rid of it. So net zero right…..well there's also the people that don't pay it back and get fees, etc eventually collecting the bill, but what may not cross folk's minds is they'll be charged income tax on that “accidental” bill.
So correct me if my math is wrong but if the federal government has approximately 1.8 million employees and 10% turn over per year that's 180,000 people. If the previous employee is sent a payment and then a bill for even $100 (mine is $550), then if that person makes over 40k-ish/yr they pay 22% income tax at the end of the year, meaning they just gave the feds an extra $22. Now multiply that by lets say a nice round number of 10% of recent employees and that's an extra $396k in tax revenue. If all 10% were sent a $550 bill like I was, that's an extra 2.1mil….and so on so its not obvious but still raking in a ton of extra income tax revenue.
I'm not really one to get excited about conspiracy theories, but I am getting more cynical as I get older (and hopefully wiser) but honestly it'd kinda be an ingenious scam to generate more tax revenue. Wildly immoral and illegal, but genius. Thoughts?