They, after all, figured out the intricacies and potential of the first-time house buyer credit and the ones who designed it and enforced it did not. Furthermore, thousands of IRS agents took advantage of the credit (and us) even though they were not entitled to do so.

OK, so maybe this shouldn't come as a surprise, but did you know that a bunch of prisoners in US jails have defrauded the government out of more than $27 million for the first-time home-buyer tax credit ? Jay Hancock over at the Baltimore Sun isn't surprised . He says that since the whole housing bubble was based on a lot of fraud why should the efforts to recover be any different. "The IRS paid out $9.1 million to 1,295 people who were in jail at the time they said they bought a home, and 241 of those prisoners were serving life sentences, according to the report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which monitors the Internal Revenue Service. On average, that's slightly more than $7,000 per prisoner.

Another $17.6 million went to 2,555 people who bought their homes before the tax credit became law--averaging out to about $6,890 per person."

But one item Hancock highlights is especially upsetting and it doesn't even have to do with the inmates. "More than 80 IRS employees claimed the credit even though they don't seem to have bought a house in the required time period." So not only do we have convicted criminals involved in criminal activity, we've got supposedly lawful government employees breaking the law.

The IRS is set to get a new crop of 16,000 employees to implement Obamacare. Scary to think that the folks already working there are doing such a poor job that the agency is getting even more personnel.

Are we surprised?