Here’s a scary thought, especially if you owe back taxes: What
if the Internal Revenue Service reported your payment history to
the big national credit bureaus? Unlike many other debts owed to
the federal government, unpaid taxes are not reported to credit
bureaus. The IRS is not allowed to directly share this
information because of federal privacy laws. Of course, Congress
could always change the law to allow the IRS to directly report
all delinquencies to the credit bureaus. No one has proposed
making this change, but last year the Senate Finance Committee
did ask the General Accounting Office to look at the issue. The
GAO did not make any recommendations in its report released in
October, but it did list arguments for and against the idea. It
also provided some hard numbers about the staggering amount of
money owed to the federal treasury in unpaid taxes. As of
October 2011, about $343 billion was owed in unpaid federal tax
debts. That’s more than the federal deficit of $207 billion for
the 2012 budget yea