Unreal. Today's "actually not from The Onion."

[Adam]

IRS gave bonuses to employees who owed back taxes. And that’s not all.

So, where do you work? That’s a question Internal Revenue Service employees must dread. Besides the fact that nobody like paying taxes, the agency’s reputation has suffered in the past year because of accusations that it subjected applications for tax exempt status from tea party groups to greater scrutiny.

But things got worse for the IRS yesterday.

A report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration shows that between Oct. 1, 2010, and Dec. 31, 2012, the IRS paid $2.8 million in bonuses to employees cited in the past year for such things as drug use, making violent threats, fraudulently claiming unemployment benefits, misusing government credit cards and — get this — failing to pay their taxes.

The report said more than 1,100 employees who failed to pay their taxes received discretionary awards of more than $1 million in cash bonuses and more than 10,000 hours in extra paid vacation.

[....]

You have to do something really bad before the IRS will take conduct into account, bad enough to be suspended for 14 days or more. Even then, conduct is only deemed relevant to awards of permanent pay increases, not for bonuses or extra vacation time.

[....]

The IRS’s contract with the National Treasury Employees Union bars the agency from considering bad conduct when making performance-based awards. The IRS’s contract with the National Treasury Employees Union bars the agency from considering bad conduct when making performance-based awards. As for non-union employees, federal guidelines are silent on the subject. As for non-union employees, federal guidelines are silent on the subject.

Just staggering.

[Gingersnap]

Even out here in fly-over land the State employee system instituted reforms to end this kind of nonsense.