TSR said:
kolanuraven said:
With all these ' high power' people having various degrees of ' tax problems'......forget whether they be Dem or Rep for the moment.
Each of them have ' people' who prepare their taxes for them.....prob some of the best accounting firms to be had.
Should there not be a closer review of the Tax Codes
My thought is that there needs to be a MAJOR overhaul of the tax codes so that it's not such a ' Catch-22' .
I would be for a review of the tax system. But the way i interpret what has happened is that these guys and probably many others like them were told by their accountants that they owed the taxes. They just hadn't paid them yet. I guess they were just going to pay at their convenience because of their political stature. Any citizen can pay their taxes over time I am told if agreed upon by the IRS.
Geithner was audited by the IRS and was told to pay the taxes and he only paid part of them. He admitted to the Senate he never paid the rest until he was vetted. If fact he never even throught about paying them until he was vetted. What does that say for him?
And as far as the tax code I think they better get somebody besides a Rangel to rewrite it.
September 12, 2008
From the Desk of Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton:
Rangel Nailed Again - Failed to Pay Taxes on Caribbean Resort Property
Charles B. Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the committee in charge of writing tax policy for the entire nation, "forgot" to pay taxes on $75,000 income he received from his rental property in the Dominican Republic.
Here's the scoop according to The Washington Post:
Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) acknowledged yesterday that he had not lived up to the "higher standard" expected of members of Congress, but he maintained that he should not be punished politically for failing to disclose and pay taxes on rental income from his Caribbean resort property.
The Ways and Means Committee chairman, who is battling three ethics controversies, said he would file amended tax returns and pay federal, state and local taxes he owes -- an amount that his attorney, Lanny Davis, estimated at more than $10,000 for 2004 to 2006. Rangel's accountants are working to determine his tax liability for the rest of the 20 years that he has owned the three-bedroom villa in the Dominican Republic, Davis said.
Rangel, 78, said he regretted his failure to account for the $75,000 in income the property generated, calling the omission "irresponsible."
But it gets worse. News reports also surfaced this week that Rangel paid no mortgage interest on the property for over 10 years! According to the Associated Press, "[Lanny] Davis [Rangel's lawyer] said Rangel did not know until very recently he had not been charged interest for more than a decade."
(By the way, I'm not surprised at all to see former Clinton special counsel and long-time apologist Lanny Davis representing yet another corrupt public official.)
With respect to the other "ethics controversies" noted by the Post, as I reported to you in July, Rangel allegedly used his congressional office to raise funds from corporations that have business before his committee in order to bankroll his Charles P. Rangel Center for Public Service. Rangel has also been accused of using his influence to keep four extremely rare rent-stabilized apartments (in others words, cheap) in Harlem while his neighbors are being subjected to eviction.
Has Rangel learned anything from this slew of scandals that bear his name? Not at all. After the Rangel Center scandal broke, the New York congressman chose to stage a publicity stunt, filing an ethics complaint against himself, rather than accepting responsibility for his actions. When asked about his recent tax scandal, Rangel boasted, "I'm a lucky old son of a gun…Ain't nothing going to stop me from getting back here next year."
Given the House Ethics Committee's shameless record of ignoring wrongdoing by members of Congress, Rangel can say that with confidence. But without question in my mind he has no business running a major congressional committee. And if he had any shame, he'd retire gracefully.