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Danny Werfel: Improper payments not a switch government can turn on and off

Agencies lose a new record of $125 billion in improper payments last year. Twenty-two different agencies committed errors, and three programs account for $93 bi...

Francis Rose

August 17, 2015 6:38 pm

< a min read

Agencies lose a new record of $125 billion in improper payments last year. Twenty-two different agencies committed errors, and three programs account for $93 billion in improper payments. One of those programs is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which has a 27 percent error rate. Danny Werfel, director of Boston Consulting Group and former acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, is writing for the Centre for Public Impact. He tells In Depth with Francis Rose why cutting government waste isn't as simple as it might seem.