Report Type
Report Category
Submitting Agency
State/Local Agency
State (State and Local Reports)
Fraud Type
Agency Reviewed
- (-) Department of Defense (18)
- (-) Department of Health & Human Services (28)
- (-) General Services Administration (5)
- (-) Internal Revenue Service (27)
- (-) National Security Agency (1)
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (1)
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System & CFPB (1)
- Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (1)
- Department of Agriculture (7)
- Department of Commerce (1)
- Department of Education (16)
- Department of Homeland Security (28)
- Department of Housing and Urban Development (1)
- Department of Justice (6)
- Department of Labor (37)
- Department of the Interior (8)
- Department of the Treasury (39)
- Department of Transportation (5)
- Department of Veterans Affairs (27)
- Election Assistance Commission (16)
- Environmental Protection Agency (4)
- Farm Credit Administration (1)
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (1)
- Multiple Agencies (1)
- National Science Foundation (11)
- Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (1)
- Railroad Retirement Board (5)
- Securities and Exchange Commission (1)
- Small Business Administration (33)
- Social Security Administration (3)
- Tennessee Valley Authority (3)
- U.S. Agency for International Development (4)
- U.S. Postal Service (11)
Related Organizations
Management Challenges
Any Recommendations
Any Open Recommendations
Reports
Processing of Recovery Rebate Credit Claims During the 2022 Filing Season
On March 14, 2022, we notified the Director, Submission Processing, Wage and Investment Division, of our concerns regarding the accuracy of COVID Tax Tip 2022-29 regarding Internal Revenue Code §§ 6428B(f) and 6428B(h). Specifically, the guidance states incorrectly that taxpayers can claim the RRC for a shared dependent even if the IRS has already made an advance payment for the dependent. We recommended that the IRS revise the Tax Tip and related Frequently Asked Questions, etc., to state that taxpayers who share qualifying dependents are required to reduce the amount of the RRC claimed by the advance payment issued to either parent on behalf of the dependent.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should review the 274,865 individuals identified where the IRS issued an RRC to potentially ineligible dependents and nonresidents and take the actions needed to recover payments that are determined to be erroneous.
Continue to periodically issue information on the availability of the RRC and how to claim it through Frequently Asked Questions on IRS.gov, communications with tax return preparers, annual unclaimed refund announcements, etc. until the statutory period for taxpayers to file a Tax Year 2020 and 2021 tax return to claim the RRC has expired.
Send a letter to the nearly 3 million individuals we identified where the tax return data show the individual is potentially eligible for the RRC encouraging the individuals to amend their Tax Year 2021 return and claim the credit if eligible. The letter should clearly state the eligibility requirements for claiming the RRC in simple terms and direct the individuals to additional resources if needed to assist them in determining whether they are eligible.
Although IHS Allocated COVID-19 Testing Funds To Meet Community Needs, It Did Not Ensure That the Funds Were Always Used in Accordance With Federal Requirements
We recommend that the Indian Health Service correct Purpose Statute violations totaling $19,912 relating to funds not used on COVID-19 testing and other testing-related activities from the Pine Ridge Service Unit (an IHS Direct program), and, if IHS is unable to correct those violations, report any Antideficiency Act violations.
We recommend that the Indian Health Service identify and correct any other Purpose Statute violations relating to funds not used on COVID-19 testing and other testing-related activities from the Families First Act and Paycheck Protection Act funds allocated to the IHS Direct programs within the GPAO, and, if IHS is unable to correct those violations, report any Antideficiency Act violations.
We recommend that the Indian Health Service recover $460,525 in funds not used on COVID-19 testing and other testing-related activities from the applicable sampled Tribal and UIO programs.
We recommend that the Indian Health Service identify and recover amounts not used for COVID-19 testing or other testing-related activities that we did not sample from remaining Tribal and UIO programs within the GPAO.
We recommend that the Indian Health Service develop and implement procedures to identify and deobligate any unused Families First Act funds that expired on September 30, 2022, from all locations within the GPAO.
We recommend that the Indian Health Service develop and provide adequate guidance to programs within the GPAO on the proper use of Paycheck Protection Act funds in accordance with Federal requirements.
We recommend that the Indian Health Service strengthen its review process to ensure that modifications to ISDEAA agreements and IHCIA/FAR contracts contain complete and accurate information, including the funding source, amount awarded, and applicable language required under the funding source.
We recommend that the Indian Health Service provide adequate guidance to the programs on how to track and account for funds allocated and used under the Paycheck Protection Act.
We recommend that the Indian Health Service work with Tribal and UIO programs within the GPAO that we did not sample to ensure that they have properly tracked and accounted for funds used under the Paycheck Protection Act.
HRSA Made COVID-19 Uninsured Program Payments to Providers on Behalf of Individuals Who Had Health Insurance Coverage and for Services Unrelated to COVID-19
We recommend that HRSA recover the $294,294 in improper UIP payments identified in our sample.
We recommend that HRSA identify additional improper UIP payments for services provided to insured individuals
or services unrelated to COVID-19, which we estimate to be $783.6 million, and take remedial action.
We recommend that HRSA commit to strengthening its procedures that may apply to future programs of a similar nature to expand insurance verifications using additional data fields on each patient for whom an SSN is not submitted as part of a prepayment check or postpayment review process to identify potential exact matches for health insurance coverage, ensure data sources used to verify health insurance coverage are reliable, and develop in a timely manner an assessment strategy to ensure claims are appropriately reimbursed to providers.
Audit of the Reliability of the DoD Coronavirus Disease–2019 Patient Health Data
Rec. 1: The DoD OIG recommended that the Director of the Defense Health Agency work with the Program Executive Officer of the Program Executive Office, Defense Healthcare Management Systems to document and implement the process for identifying and collecting patient health data of DoD patients in the Military Health System in current and future registries within their purview in a written document, such as a standard operating procedure. The procedure should identify, at a minimum, the internal controls throughout the process, the relevant data sources, data fields, and diagnostic codes used in the computer scripts, and should be reviewed and approved when updates occur.
Rec. 2: The DoD OIG recommended that the Senior Contracting Official of the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity and the Chief of the Joint Trauma System work with the Joint Trauma System contracting officer's representative to revise the quality assurance surveillance plan. The plan should include an appropriate sampling methodology for selecting patient health records from the Coronavirus Disease-2019 Registry to verify that the contractor is achieving the contract-required accuracy rate for entering patient data, and submit the revised quality assurance surveillance plan to the contracting officer.
Rec. 2: The DoD OIG recommended that the Senior Contracting Official of the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity and the Chief of the Joint Trauma System work with the Joint Trauma System contracting officer's representative to revise the quality assurance surveillance plan. The plan should include an appropriate sampling methodology for selecting patient health records from the Coronavirus Disease-2019 Registry to verify that the contractor is achieving the contract-required accuracy rate for entering patient data, and submit the revised quality assurance surveillance plan to the contracting officer.
Rec. 3: The DoD OIG recommended that the Chief of the Joint Trauma System conduct an analysis to determine whether the patient data entered into the Coronavirus Disease-2019 Registry met the 90 percent accuracy rate requirement for contract W81XWH-20-P-0197 and contract W81XWH-22-C-0151.
Rec. 3.a: If the contractor did not meet the 90 percent accuracy requirement, the DoD OIG recommended that the Chief of the Joint Trauma System work with the Senior Contracting Official of the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity to update the contractor's rating in the contractor's performance assessment reports for contract W81XWH-22-C-0151 and contract W81XWH-20-P-0197, when feasible.
Rec. 3.b: If the contractor did not meet the 90 percent accuracy requirement, the DoD OIG recommended that the Chief of the Joint Trauma System work with the Senior Contracting Official of the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity to recoup any of the $3.9 million in questioned costs paid for services that did not comply with the terms of contract W81XWH-20-P-0197, if feasible.
Rec. 3.c: If the contractor did not meet the 90 percent accuracy requirement, the DoD OIG recommended that the Chief of the Joint Trauma System work with the Senior Contracting Official of the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity to recoup any of the $2.3 million in questioned costs paid for services that did not comply with the terms of contract W81XWH-22-C-0151.
Rec. 3.d: If the contractor did not meet the 90 percent accuracy requirement, the DoD OIG recommended that the Chief of the Joint Trauma System work with the Senior Contracting Official of the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity to consider all available contract remedies for contract W81XWH-22-C-0151, including modifying and, if necessary, terminating and re-competing the contract, and take action to ensure that the Department receives full value for the funds it expends for contract W81XWH-22-C-0151.
Rec. 3.e: If the contractor did not meet the 90 percent accuracy requirement, the DoD OIG recommended that the Chief of the Joint Trauma System work with the Senior Contracting Official of the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity to delegate an official to review the concerns identified in this report, including the actions of the contracting officials, and take administrative actions, as necessary. The review should include a determination on whether the contractor's performance assessment reports were accurate and make updates as necessary.
Rec. 4.a: The DoD OIG recommended that the Director of the Defense Health Agency work with the Chief of the Joint Trauma System establish and implement a process for selecting Coronavirus Disease-2019 events for entry into the Coronavirus Disease-2019 Registry to limit selection bias.
Rec. 4.b: The DoD OIG recommended that the Director of the Defense Health Agency work with the Chief of the Joint Trauma System to include a bias disclosure notice on all reports generated from the Coronavirus Disease-2019 Registry until the Coronavirus Disease-2019 Registry data represent the population of DoD patients who had a Coronavirus Disease-2019 event.
Rec. 5.a: The DoD OIG recommended that the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs) establish and implement a policy for developing and populating patient registries that aligns with the Department of Health and Human Services best practices, "Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Registries for Evaluating Patient Outcomes: A User?s Guide," current edition.
Rec. 5.b: The DoD OIG recommended that the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs) conduct a review of all patient registries in the Military Health System to verify the reliability of data in each registry and implement corrective actions, as necessary.
American Rescue Plan Act: Assessment of the Expanded Child and Dependent Care and Earned Income Tax Credits
On February 17, 2022, we notified the Director, Submission Processing, Wage and Investment Division, of our concern with three business rules and recommended that IRS management update the business rule programming to identify and evaluate returns for both refundable and nonrefundable CDCC claims.
Ensure that programming is updated for Processing Year 2023 to identify taxpayers who reported an obviously invalid care provider TIN on Form 2441.
Develop a tool or programming for Error Resolution to ensure that tax returns claiming prior year expenses are systemically identified to determine if the maximum CDCC had been claimed in the prior year, before processing the return and potentially releasing erroneous refunds.
Work with the Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Policy, to advance legislation to treat a tax return as filed only when it is accepted. This would remove the legal risks associated with rejecting tax returns with conditions that indicate the taxpayer is ineligible for refundable credits claimed on the return.
If legislation is enacted, develop programming to reject e-filed returns meeting certain conditions, such as those noted in this report.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should ensure that the compliance filter criteria for identifying individuals claiming self-only EITC who are not eligible for work is updated to include the *************************.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should establish processes to compare subsequent legislative changes with compliance filter
programming to identify and make necessary changes, as needed.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should review the 774,559 returns with self-only EITC from potentially ineligible ******** and take actions needed to recover credits that are determined to be erroneous.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should complete examinations for all 61 tax returns we identified to ensure taxpayers receive the correct CDCC amounts.
American Rescue Plan Act: Review of the Reconciliation of the Child Tax Credit
Review all of the 6,833 taxpayers with excess Child Tax Credit identified during our review and take appropriate actions to ensure that the taxpayers receive the correct amount of the Child Tax Credit.
Identify additional taxpayers after May 5, 2022, who received excess Child Tax Credit as a result of tax examiner error and take appropriate actions to ensure that these taxpayers receive the correct amount of the Child Tax Credit.
Review the 105 taxpayers who potentially did not receive all of their eligible Child Tax Credit identified during our review and take appropriate actions to ensure that they receive the correct amount of the Child Tax Credit.
Evaluate the priority of programming to ensure that processes and procedures are developed to identify and correct tax examiner entries input during the error correction process that exceed statutory limits, including a process to systemically reprocess corrected returns through Error Resolution programming before being released for processing.
On February 17, 2022, we notified IRS management of our concerns with undeliverable payments that post after the processing of the tax return. In these instances, the IRS processed the tax return as if the payment was received by the taxpayer. As a result, the taxpayer would receive less Child Tax Credit than they are eligible to receive. We recommended that the IRS develop a process to identify undeliverable payments after
processing of the TY 2021 tax return.
Identify taxpayers with advance payments who have yet to file a TY 2021 tax return and send a reminder notice, similar to the Department of the Treasury, using the advance payments as part of the criteria.
Work with the Commissioner, Small Business/Self-Employed Division, to create a process to recover potentially erroneous advance payments from taxpayers who have not filed a TY 2021 tax return.
American Rescue Plan Act: Continued Review of Premium Tax Credit Provisions
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, and the Commissioner, Small Business/Self-Employed Division, should consider expanding the use of soft notices to address potentially erroneous PTC claims. These notices should provide individuals with information specific to the eligibility or reporting requirements related to the potential error the IRS identified and suggest the filing of an amended return, if an error has
occurred.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should notify the 317,418 taxpayers we identified, who potentially received less PTC than they were entitled or repaid more APTC than required, that they may qualify for additional PTC or overpaid APTC and encourage them to file an amended Tax Year 2021 return, if applicable.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should notify the 317,418 taxpayers we identified, who potentially received less PTC than they were entitled or repaid more APTC than required, that they may qualify for additional PTC or overpaid APTC and encourage them to file an amended Tax Year 2021 return, if applicable.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should develop processes, such as the use of courtesy letters to notify individuals of their potential eligibility, to proactively assist taxpayers who, based on available tax return and Exchange data, potentially claimed less PTC than entitled or paid more APTC than required.
The Commissioner, Wage and Investment Division, should develop processes, such as the use of courtesy letters to notify individuals of their potential eligibility, to proactively assist taxpayers who, based on available tax return and Exchange data, potentially claimed less PTC than entitled or paid more APTC than required.
On October 26, 2022, we notified the Director, Submission Processing, of our concerns regarding taxpayers who are potentially eligible for additional PTC based on their unemployment status during Tax Year 2021. We recommended that the Director, Submission Processing, notify these taxpayers that they may qualify for additional PTC or be able to reduce the amount of excess APTC they must repay and encourage them to file an amended Tax Year 2021 return, if they qualify.
On October 25, 2022, we notified the Director, Submission Processing, of our concerns with the draft Tax Year 2022 Form 8962 instructions. We
recommended that the IRS revise the instructions to inform taxpayers that they have an option to set a domestic violence indicator on their tax return.
Audit of DoD Actions Taken to Protect DoD Information When Using Collaboration Tools During the Coronavirus Disease–2019 Pandemic
Recommendation is CUI
Recommendation is CUI
Recommendation is CUI
Recommendation is CUI
Recommendation is CUI
Recommendation is CUI
(U) Rec. B.1.a: The DoD OIG recommended that the Chief Information Officer for the Defense Finance and Accounting Service renegotiate changes with the Adobe Connect vendor to configure Adobe Connect to require privileged users to authenticate into the collaboration tool using multifactor authentication.
Recommendation is CUI
Recommendation is CUI
Recommendation is CUI
Recommendation is CUI
Rec. B.3.c: The DoD OIG recommended that the Chief Information Officer for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency configure Zoom for Government to lock user accounts after three unsuccessful logon attempts in a 15-minute period.
Recommendation is CUI
Audit of GSA’s Response to COVID-19: PBS Faces Challenges to Meet the Ventilation and Acceptable Indoor Air Quality Standard in GSA-Owned Buildings
We recommend that the PBS Commissioner complete a comprehensive assessment to determine whether GSA-owned building air handlers meet the ASHRAE ventilation standard’s minimum outdoor air requirements and develop a comprehensive plan to address deficiencies identified.
We recommend that the PBS Commissioner create and implement a plan to notify building occupants whenever deficiencies and hazards associated with outdoor air requirements are identified.
We recommend that the PBS Commissioner ensure that all PBS staff with ventilation system responsibilities, including contracting officer’s representatives, contracting officers, project managers, and building managers, are trained on the requirements of the ASHRAE ventilation standard.
We recommend that the PBS Commissioner ensure operations and maintenance contracts define requirements for regular testing, adjusting, and balancing of air handlers.
We recommend that the PBS Commissioner ensure that GSA’s Guidance for COVID-19 HVAC Operations adheres to CDC COVID-19 guidance for improved building ventilation.
Alaska Experienced Challenges in Meeting Federal and State Foster Care Program Requirements During the COVID-19 Pandemic
We recommend that the Office of Children's Services ensure that staff are adequately trained on policies and procedures to ensure that required background checks are completed before placing children in foster homes under emergency conditions.
We recommend that the Office of Children's Services continue to identify ways to address the challenges related to meeting the requirements for conducting monthly caseworker visits and home inspections, including consulting with ACF.
We recommend that the Office of Children's Services complete home inspections in accordance with requirements for the two foster homes identified by our audit as lacking completed inspections and for the five foster homes requiring in-person inspections.