From the news lately:
Tom Daschle just withdrew from being nominated for Health and Human Services Secretary over unpaid taxes.
Nancy Killefer withdrew her nomination as chief performance expert at the Office of Management and Budget, over tax troubles.
Caroline Kennedy withdrew from consideration for the NY senate seat over tax issues.
Timothy Geithner was appointed Treasury Secretary, despite his own problems with unpaid back taxes.
Really inspirational set of stories as I get my W2 in the mail and get ready to start doing taxes…
Am I the only one who gets the feeling that maybe all the rich people don’t actually pay taxes?
I was listening to the details about Daschle and it seems that it was a case of him realizing late that he should have paid taxes on certain things and actually owning up to it, only to have it looked at in a bad frame of reference. But maybe that’s the nice spin on it. I don’t know, it seems that there’s all these taxes that are vague and come up later and people pay them and then it can be made to look like they were trying to scam the govt. Daschle paid all of the taxes that were owed right away. The bigger question people were asking was “whoa, look at the amount of those taxes. Just how much money is that guy making anyway?”
The thing is, if all those rich people with all their accountants, etc., can make mistakes on their taxes, wouldn’t you say the whole things is just a bit tooo complicated?
And Geithner said his mistake was not intentional…isn’t that why we call it a mistake?? He got fines, etc. removed and not everyone gets that. Where is the fairness??
Geithner’s case was blown out of proportion. His company accountants, tax attorney and his paid accountants all reviewed his materials and concurred that his return was in order, only to later find it wasn’t.
That said, rich people don’t pay their fullest possible tax burden. They find a thousand dodges and excuses.
I didn’t pay some taxes once and an IRS agent came to my house. In his luxury sedan. Just before his two week vacation to Italy. It’s nice to know my taxes help out the needy.