IRS paid $13B in bogus credits, inspector says

The Internal Revenue Service paid more than $13 billion in tax credits last year to people who may not have qualified, a government investigator said Tuesday.

The agency’s inspector general issued a report finding improper payments for the Earned Income Tax Credits program totaled between $13.3 billion and $15.6 billion.

That represents about a quarter of all EITC payments, which are supposed to go to low-income working families, according to the Boston Globe.

"The IRS can and must do more to protect taxpayer dollars from waste, fraud and abuse," said J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.

Read more from the Boston Globe.