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Geithner Didn’t Pay Taxes

WASHINGTON -(AP)- [1](Timothy Geithner)… President-elect Barack Obama‘s choice to run the Treasury Department and lead the nation’s economic rescue disclosed publicly Tuesday that he failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001 to 2004, a last-minute complication that Senate Democrats tried to brush aside as a minor bump on an otherwise smooth path to confirmation.

Minor bump?

He failed to pay self-employment taxes for money he earned while working for IMF from 2001 to 2003, according to materials released by the Senate committee. In 2006, the IRS notified him that he owed $14,847 in self-employment taxes and $2,383 in interest from 2003 and 2004, which he paid after an audit. The IRS waived penalties for those tax years.

Transition officials discovered last fall that Geithner also had not paid the taxes in 2001 or 2002. He paid $25,970 in back taxes and interest for those years several days before Obama announced his choice, the committee documents showed.

So the outstanding bill, comes up to around $34,000.00.  I’ll tell you what, if I had an outstanding text cap of $34,000.00 I’d have Federal authorities on my doorstep telling me it was a crime, not passing it off as a minor bomb .  And I certainly wouldn’t have senate majority leader Harry Reid leading to my defense, saying that it was just a “hiccup” .

And just around out the field, does anybody suppose that the Democrats would be making light of this kind of thing, assuming that we were talking about one of President Bush’s nominees? You know as well as I do what would happen.  Maybe wondering who bush would appoint next, since this appointee melted down in front of the committee.

BBCT to James Joyner who says: [2]

I’m reminded of the consecutive picks to head Bill Clinton’s Justice Department who had broken the law by failure to pay Social Security taxes on their nannies.   Lawyers and economists aren’t necessarily experts in every single facet of the wide territory handled by people in those professions.  It’s still embarrassing, though, to get caught skirting the rules.

Almost like there was a pattern of dishonesty, or something.  We keep running into this kind of thing with Obama and his people.

Update: BBCT to the Chicago Sun-Times, where this post was carried, today. [3]

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