Obama’s Treasury Secretary nominee is an income tax cheat

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Obama’s Treasury Secretary nominee is an income tax cheat

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 | Politics |

President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to run the Treasury Department and lead the economic rescue effort disclosed to senators Tuesday that he failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001 to 2004, a last-minute complication in an otherwise smooth path to confirmation.

Timothy Geithner paid most of the past-due taxes days before Obama announced his nomination in November, an Obama transition official said. The unpaid taxes were discovered by Obama’s transition team while investigating Geithner’s background, the official said.

Transition officials discovered last fall that Geithner also had not paid the taxes in 2001 or 2002. He paid $25,970 in taxes and interest for those years several days before Obama announced his nomination, the transition official said.

Geithner also didn’t realize a housekeeper he paid in 2004 and 2005 did not have current employment documentation as an immigrant for the final three months she worked for him, the transition official said.

As Leona Hemsley said, only the little people pay taxes. Not big people like the secretary of the department of the U.S. government that collects taxes.

Tags: only little people pay taxes, only republicans are corrupt

3 Comments to Obama’s Treasury Secretary nominee is an income tax cheat

Steve K.
January 14, 2009

Do you really believe that Geithner does his own taxes? Cause, and I’m going way out on a limb here, but I’m guessing no. And, going out even further, I’m guessing he doesn’t go through his return line by line with a big huge well-worn stack of IRS publications by his side before submitting them.

Maybe hiring an accountant who makes mistakes should disqualify you from being Treasury Secretary. But that’s a kinda different issue than ‘Obama nominates tax cheat’.

exile
January 14, 2009

Onward and upward with with hope and change, Not. What did we expect when we elected a man from the most corrupt political machine in the United States with no executive experience whatsoever? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results (e.g., Clinton and Carter). I forgot, the fact that Obama’s nominee did not pay his taxes must be Bush’s fault. Everything else is.

exile

exile´s last blog post..“poetry on the airwaves”

Les Jones
January 14, 2009

After reading this morning’s WaPo piece, I’m more inclined to think it was an innocent mistake rather than cheating, but then, the WaPo would cover for anyone Obama nominates, so we’ll see.

“But that’s a kinda different issue than ‘Obama nominates tax cheat’.”

Which is likewise kinda different than the post title of “Obama’s Treasury Secretary nominee is an income tax cheat,” but point taken, assuming it was an innocent mistake.