The Obama Tax Cheats
July 22, 2012 | Kevin Glass
While President Obama exhorts Americans to support tax hikes on high income individuals, families and businesses, he could stand to look inside the halls of the White House for some extra revenue.
Andrew Malcolm over at Investor's Business Daily points us to the hard numbers: three dozen Obama executive advisers and aides owe hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes - and federal workers as a whole owe the IRS $3.4 billion in unpaid taxes.
A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama's executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven't paid any share, let alone their fair share.
Previous reports have shown how well-paid Obama's White House staff is, with 457 aides pulling down more than $37 million last year. That's up seven workers and nearly $4 million from the Bush administration's last year.
Nearly one-third of Obama's aides make more than $100,000 with 21 being paid the top White House salary of $172,200, each.
The IRS' 2010 delinquent tax revelations come as part of a required annual agency report on federal employees' tax compliance. Turns out, an awful lot of folks being paid by taxpayers are not paying their own income taxes.
The report finds that thousands of federal employees owe the country more than $3.4 billion in back taxes. That's up 3% in the past year.
Now, this could just be a case of federal workers not quite understanding what they do and do not owe in the tax code. That would be an argument for, at the very least, revenue-neutral tax simplification. President Obama is ideologically committed to having high marginal tax rates, though, and was steadfastly against a Simpson-Bowles style tax reform that would bring the top tax rate down to 25%.
Meanwhile, President Obama's IRS is busy auditing top Mitt Romney donors.
