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Unemployment Insurance: Survey of State Administrators and Contacts with Companies Promoting Tax Avoidance Practices

GAO-03-819T Published: Jun 19, 2003. Publicly Released: Jun 19, 2003.
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Highlights

GAO appeared before Subcommittees on Oversight and Human Resources, House Committee on Ways and Means to discuss the results of our investigation of the extent to which states have found that companies manipulate state unemployment tax rates through a variety of methods in order to lower their unemployment taxes, a practice known as "SUTA dumping," and of the extent to which some consulting firms promote SUTA dumping methods. We conducted our investigation from March 2003 through June 2003 in accordance with quality standards for investigations as set forth by the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency. To obtain an overview of the extent of the problem, we conducted a survey of unemployment insurance administrators, in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Additionally, one of our agents, posing as a business owner who was looking for ways to reduce state unemployment insurance taxes, placed telephone calls to four consulting firms we identified through the Internet to determine whether they promote SUTA dumping techniques. We also interviewed officials of the Office of Workforce Security, Department of Labor to determine how the federal-state unemployment program operates.

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Topics

FraudInvestigations by federal agenciesState lawState taxesUnemployment insuranceUnemploymentTaxesConsulting firmsInsurance ratesHuman capital management