The Geithner defense, better than Twinkies!
Posted by: msgruntled on: January 28, 2009
It must sure be nice to not have the IRS busting into your house and seizing your assets for not paying taxes for four years.
Obama, who I support, missed the boat on this one. Let’s see: Geithner goes four years without apparently looking at his W-2s, ignores many memos from the World Bank that he is responsible for paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, and only pays up on two of the four years of unpaid taxes when he gets vetted.
Spare me the contriteness, Tim, you are a tax cheat and have the attitude typical of Wall Street’s “masters of the universe” whose self-interests brought the entire economy down. BTW: Weren’t you on watch when all those risky financial instruments were being created, arguing for more deregulation?
But hey, we all have a new defense with the IRS: I forgot I had to pay taxes and I’m really sorry. Geithner didn’t have to pay any penalties, so why should I? WTF?
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- msgruntled: No he didn't pay penalties, he paid interest. There is a difference. The Washington Post covered this story in detail including several interviews wit
1 | wm
January 29, 2009 at 1:53 am
Several factual errors here; for example, Geithner did pay penalties. I agree with the general conclusion that Geithner should have known better, but these arguments contain so many mistakes they don’t make a good case for that conclusion.
msgruntled
January 30, 2009 at 4:55 pm
No he didn’t pay penalties, he paid interest. There is a difference. The Washington Post covered this story in detail including several interviews with World Bank employees, and what I said in my post is correct.
I quote Politifact, for one: “Here’s the quickie background: The IRS audited Geithner in 2006, and found that he failed to pay self-employment taxes on compensation he received as an employee of the International Monetary Fund for tax years the IRS was looking at, 2003 and 2004 (by law, the IRS could not audit him for years prior to 2003). So Geithner paid $16,732 in back self-employment tax, plus interest. The IRS waived penalties for those years.” And again, “Some Republicans note, however, that the IMF gave ample documentation to its workers about what they should do. The Senate Finance Committee overseeing Geithner’s confirmation hearing posted several documents given to Geithner by the IMF designed to help employees understand their tax obligations. For one, there’s the IMF Employee Tax Manual given to new hires, which describes how to pay self-employment taxes. The IMF pays additional money to U.S. employees, on top of their regular salary, to offset self-employment taxes, and quarterly and year-end wage statements include the amount of self-employment taxes added to wage income. Lastly, IMF employees are required to annually file a form requesting the self-employment “gross ups” to wages.
Perhaps you are thinking about the early-withdrawal tax penalty for his IRA withdrawal, that is NOT the penalties for failure to pay back taxes that the rest of use would have to pay.
If you don’t want to accept Politifact, how about the Wall Street Journal?
“For our part, we are delighted that Mr. Baucus and Democrats are suddenly in such a forgiving tax mood. In addition to being a teaching moment for liberals, perhaps Mr. Geithner’s tax snafu can do all of America some good. We’d suggest that Mr. Geithner and Mr. Baucus together set a new standard for the IRS in dealing with people who, like Mr. Geithner, make a boo-boo on their tax returns.
Let’s have an amnesty — with penalties waived, as they were for Mr. Geithner — for all those Americans who somehow “forgot” to pay their taxes but are now willing to fess up or are audited. If forgiveness is to be the order of the day for the man who may soon be responsible for the IRS, American taxpayers deserve a similar reprieve.”
Since you don’t say what all the “mistakes” are, not sure how to respond except to point out the above.