Posted by Joseph Y. Calhoun, III

You can’t make this stuff up (via Yahoo):

Getting audited is such a hassle! Just ask the IRS.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office inspected the tax agency’s financial statements from the 2009 fiscal year with the exacting thoroughness of, well, of an IRS auditor, and found a few billion-dollar errors.

According to the report (PDF), the IRS made a variety of accountingerrors last year that “could adversely affect the reliability of its financial statements” and result in “duplicate or erroneous refunds.” Among the mistakes were a “failure to record the receipt of a taxpayer’s $3 million payment” and an $8 billion discrepancy between two accounting systems tracking how much money taxpayers owe. The audit also found a $5.1 billion “unexplained variance” between the total amount the agency took in last year and the amount its detailedtax files said it took in.

But what’s a few billion here or there, right?

Why would anyone want to increase the size of the government given this kind of efficiency?

Update: It turns out that not only isn’t the government very good at collecting money via the IRS, they aren’t very good at dispesning it either:

Do Not Pay? Do Read This Post

Peter R. Orszag, Director

Over the past few weeks (and since taking office 16 months ago), we have focused on cutting waste, boosting efficiency, and creating a government more open and responsive to the American people.

Take “improper payments” for example. These are payments that government agencies make to people and entities who aren’t eligible to receive government money, as well as payments to the wrong person, or in the wrong amount, or at the wrong time. In 2009, improper payments totaled nearly $110 billion, the highest amount to date. These payments are not only a waste of money, they also erode the public’s trust in government.