The tax-dodging Treasury Secretary saga
The next act in Obama’s Treasury Secretary drama has been set for Jan. 21 at the request of Sen. Jon Kyl. The rescheduling wasn’t related to the tax-dodging disclosures.
Looks like Sen. Kyl is on the fence:
A Senate hearing to confirm Timothy Geithner as U.S. Treasury secretary has been delayed until Jan. 21 after a Republican senator said he had a schedule conflict.
Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona, a member of the Senate Finance Committee which confirms the Treasury secretary, objected to the scheduled hearing date of Jan. 16, Kyl’s spokesman, Ryan Patmintra, said in an interview. Kyl, also a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is scheduled to attend a confirmation hearing for Attorney General-designee Eric Holder tomorrow, Patmintra said.
…Kyl hasn’t decided how he’ll vote on the nomination after Geithner told panel members yesterday that he paid almost $50,000 in back taxes and interest to the Internal Revenue Service.
Will he buy the “honest mistake” alibi?
You can contact Kyl through his Twitter page here.
Meantime, Rush Limbaugh reminds listeners that Joe Biden told us paying higher taxes is patriotic. What does that make tax-dodger Geithner?
See what others have said
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Trackbacks
- Honest Mistakes? « Bohicaville
- Bloodthirsty Liberal » Honest Mistake My Tuchas
- Every Liberal On Earth Knows Joe The Plumber Had Unpaid Taxes « OutOfTheBlu
- Geithner confirmation problems « Blog Roundup
- Obama On Geithner’s Tax Evasion « Jane Q. Republican
- Pay As I Say, Not As I Do (Not) « The Chronicles Of A Rogue Jew
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Categories: Tim Geithner
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Tim Geithner… Charlie Rangel… Al Franken… does anybody in the Democrat party actually pay their taxes?
I’m sure he is a nice guy but gimme a break. The IMF does taxes “differently” than everyone else? What does that mean? They must not do taxes at all, and the fact he did nothing tells me he is unqualified for the job, morally and intellectually.
What if this were a Bush appointee?
Taxes are obviously for the little people.
If I was a Senator my position would be, “Okay fine, honest mistake. That being said if you cannot manage a basic financial requirement in your personal life, I see no way that you can manage the U.S. Treasury. You will not get my vote.”
The IMF employees people as “contractors” not as employees. As a contractor, you have to file quarterly estimated taxes. Do you have any idea how much you have to go through to file your taxes as a contractor? I do, this is just laughable.
If this is the smartest guy out there, we should look further.
This is the guy who is supposed to be the sub-messiah on TARP?? If he can’t be trusted to pay his own taxes(sorry it is NOT that difficult) how can he be trusted to spend/track/report/or detemine the best use of the TARP funds? The One better find someone else who actually understands assets and liabilities and the legislation that established TARP in the first place.
Anyone think an “ethics” issue is going to stop the Obama administration from getting it’s appointees confirmed?
Please… Obama and the Democratic leaders are demonstrably the most UN-ethical bunch ever to mis-serve the public. And it hasn’t impeded them in the least to date.
So, he didn’t pay his own taxes and yet he’s supposed to manage the tax money taken from us. Go figure. He doesn’t seem all that bright to me.
If he WAS a Bush appointee he would not even be considered. His nomination would be held up in committee.
Is this a trick question?
Rambler: Perhaps he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, which seems to qualify any BHO appointee (e.g., Panetta for the CIA).
We are NOT to worry, The One will do his magic to make all appointees the best ever, right after he stops the seas from rising and he cools the Earth.
However, don’t hold your breath!
So where are the NOW gals on this, with their usual cries of sexism, and why aren’t they taking a stand?
I mean, when Zoe Baird, Linda Chavez and several other female nominees to cabinet positions were discovered to have nannygate/tax troubles, they were forced out of the process. So why isn’t Geithner being held to that same standard? Could it be that NOW only sees sexism when they can pin it on the right?
NOW kowtows to Democrats like the abused wife of drunken factory worker, keeping their mouths shut and retreating to the kitchen when told.
I pay my outside CPA $25 per payroll period to do taxes in Quickbooks for my one employee for my side business, and pay her $50 per quarter to file all of the reports (ungodly amount of paperwork, you would think they could intergrate the databases between social secuirty, unemployment department and the IRS, but that would make too much sense). Then once a month, I take her figures and go to http://www.eftps.com and login and pay the tax withholdings. Then I go to the phone and dial in to pay the Michigan withholding.
I hate paperwork, I have an MBA, I have taught accounting in college, so I probably have the same type of education as this appointee. If I am smart enough to hire someone to take care of this headache, then he should have been smart enough to do thte same.
So we either have a really cheap bastard, a stupid bastard, or a scofflaw who will be king of the treasury. None of those alternatives bode well for the REAL people who pay taxes.
And don’t get me started at the hoops I had to go through to even pay the first month of withholding last year. It was an unbelievable paperwork nightmare since the EFTPS sent my enrollment paperwork to an address I had not been living at for 3 years. Ever try to pay taxes owed without being in their payroll tax withholding system? They don’t have a fall back method in place to send in a check. I had to download a form that said “DO NOT SUBMIT” and mail it to an office we hoped would take it. Once I got my EFTPS enrollment sent to the right address, it was not so bad moving forward.
So, If I had to do that for a part time employee to my side business who makes about $15K per year, so the amount of taxes I send in each month is not that much, then this clown should have made more of an effort to pay the taxes when due. Don’t even get me started on whether he was too ignorant to know.
EVERYONE who files a schedule C knows that we pay both ends of the FICA taxes. Did he think that 1099 didn’t man anything when he got it at the end of each yaar? Criminy.
I just spent an hour in the CPA’s office earlier this week filling out all of the quarterly and end of the year forms (actually she had them ready, but it took that long to go over them and sign them and get them in the right enveolopes). I didn’t want to spend an hour in there doing that, but I had to, it was my obligation as an employer, taxpayer and US Citizen.
This guy is too stupid to be confirmed. The Rebublicans need to grow a spine.
Please! Don’t cool the earth any more O Great One! I am freezing my butt off here in SE Tennessee! I can’t imagine what the folks in the Mid-west are going through! I hope Big Al is enjoying his Nobel. With any more awards like that, the Nobel Committee will reduce it’s value to that of a Cracker Jack prize.
RedDog, it is 10 degrees and snowing here in Michigan. We have already gotten 90 inches of snow, 50 inches above the norm for this season. Last year we got 108 inches, and was the 2nd highes on record. I think we will break the 134 inches set in 1930’s.
Global warming? HA!!!
That bunch must have dug very deep to find crap like this.
It appears that Obama’s cabinet is going to be more ethics-challenged than even the first black president’s.
Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood had to step down as appointees for AG (before Rodham finally saddled us with Reno) for not paying the employer’s share of FICA taxes for their nannies.
Timothy Geithner not only didn’t pay those taxes, he didn’t pay his own for several years. Now, everyone is standing by their man — common mistake, honest mistake intone the members of the Pravda Press Corp.
Maybe it is a common / honest mistake for Joe-Sixpack (I don’t believe it is, but let that go for now), but for a guy trying to get a job that puts him in charge of the IRS? In a logical world, wouldn’t a failure to pay taxes be an automatic disqualifier to be the boss of the IRS? I know, I know. There is nothing logical about liberals.
Instead, he is considered to be the only man in the country that can get us out of the current financial crisis; IOW, “too big to fail” so we must overlook this “honest mistake.”
If that’s the case (that one, and only one, man is the solution), then we can stop all the talk about the demise of this country happening next year or some other year in the future. It’s already happened.
Thanks, M-VRWC, I tried my best but could not remember the name Kimba Wood!
Lord Obama says it was a simple mistake.
That quite possiably would have put one of us lesser morals in jail.
So obamas first moves to restore fiscal sanity were:
1/ Spend 1 trillion we do not have.
2/ Spend so much being sworn in that bush had to declear a state of emergency to pay for it.
3/ Nominate a person who can’t do thier own taxes to run the economy.
heckofajob there obama…
Anyone know what amount he had to pay in penalties, for his goof? Does anyone out here in peasantville get to goof on their taxes without paying penalties?
And shouldn’t the head of the department be the one person who should not goof on paying taxes. Of course he blames his taxman for not making him aware of all the back taxes he owed. Isn’t the tax code, by law, supposed to be understandable by average citizen?
Well at least the One has already cleared him of doing anything wrong.
Yeah, and I’m glad you mentioned Linda Chavez. She didn’t fit in with my point about the ethics-challenged Bubba Clinton administration, and I also had forgotten about her.
But by including a Bush appointee that was also disqualified for the same offense, you ensured that the liberal tools who post here can’t accuse commenters on this site of selective memory on this topic.
A patriotic/unpatriotic version of Leona Hemsley?
But not to worry: that bastion of sincerity Senator Schumer of New York is on the radio explaining it was all an honest mistake. If you can not trust Chucky WHO can you trust?
Our quarterly taxes make me a little more cynical–if there was room for any more cynicism. Damn but I hate Democrats, Liberals and the IRS.
Can we get some facts here? I don’t bother asking from the MSM, so perhaps someone can outline what happened?
The fact is, if this guy has been doing a lot of international travel it’s very possible that he or his tax preparer under-paid. That’s part of the problem – the tax code is a minefield of stupidity. It’s byzantine.
If this *is* an honest mistake, let’s find something real to kvetch about, shall we? Like how our tax laws can’t be deciphered by an army of CPA’s…
If it’s not an honest mistake, can we get some proof?
This is why liberals get traction. Once in awhile they might have a point, and they point to us as being unreasonable. If the guy is a bum, let’s prove that he’s a bum. If he’s not, let’s treat him like a citizen…
The Fair Tax takes the “cheat” out of this so called innocent mistake; Everyone should take the time to read both books; It may be the one and only major policy change the Republicans can grab hold of, show the people how it puts the power back into their hands, and ultimately minimizes the power of both major parties; Otherwise it’s socialism all the way with more people sitting in the wagon than pulling it.
“Honest mistake”. Sorry. I am not buying it. I am self-employed and the quarterly IRS paper trail that I have is incredible. Even a late payment of one day triggers a letter from the IRS. This sounds more like avoidance. Obama needs to find someone else and the Republicans need to find spines.
#4 said it best.
If you can’t handle the burden of paying taxes the way the rest of the country has to, then you are not qualified to run the Treasury or hold any other major government position.
Avoidance is using the tax law legally to not pay taxes. I use avoidance every year to minimize my tax bill. No stigma there.
Given that it’s now being admitted to being an (a-hem) honest mistake, what this guy did was illegal .
And the darlings at the IRS either missed the mistake all these years(through their own incompetence which is rampant) or caught it, but decided to give a pass toMr. He Who Is the Only One Who Can Save the Country.
The timing of his finally paying the bill due and his confirmation hearing for this position is decidely suspect.
As the Monty Python crew was wont to say, “it’s good to be king.”
Don’t forget, the Obama team knew about this issue before his nomination was announced and they chose to go along with him anyway. Bush’s team would have done the right thing and passed him over, if for no other reason than they wouldn’t have the unmitigated gall to expect Congress and the American people to accept such a joke.
But ahhh, such is the audacity of hope and change.
So presiding over the CitiGroup collapse is masked potatoes? Rag on him for that. It’s billions of dollars compared to a few thousand he MIGHT get away with “I didn’t know.” The unpaid taxes are a distraction from the real evil he’s presided over.
{^_^}