You’ve heard the idiom, “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch”. But how many bunches get spoiled by 14,132 bad apples?

14,132 is the number of “Individuals who have received erroneous Home buyer Tax Credits totaling at least $26.7 million” according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report recently released.

Key findings in the report:

• 2,555 taxpayers receiving credits totaling $17.6 million for homes purchased prior to the dates allowed by law.
• 1,295 prisoners receiving credits totaling $9.1 million who were incarcerated at the time they reported that they purchased their home. These prisoners did not file joint returns, so their claims could not have been the result of purchases made with or by their spouses. Further, TIGTA found that 241 prisoners were serving life sentences at the time they claimed that they bought new primary residences.
• 10,282 taxpayers receiving credits for homes that were also used by other taxpayers to claim the credit. (In one case, TIGTA found that 67 taxpayers were using the same home to claim the credit.) TIGTA auditors have not fully quantified the total of these erroneous credits, but all indications are that the total will be in the tens of millions of dollars.

Oh yeah, at least 34 IRS employees erroneously received the credit too!

I’m sure that as months progress, the total number will eclipse these 14,132 apples.

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