So now we hear that Tom Daschle, Obama's choice for Health Secretary, somehow got away with not paying more that $100,000 in taxes he should have paid. He's now paid those taxes, plus interest (no word on whether he paid penalities), but:
The information about Mr. Daschle has come to light in different ways. He disclosed some to the transition team, including the taxes owed on the car and driver. The transition team spotted a problem with his charitable tax deductions, and the Senate Finance Committee discovered the failure to pay Medicare tax on the use of the car.
So, it wasn't just the deal with the car and driver -- honestly, who knows what the tax sitch is with one's chauffeur? -- but charitable contributions as well? And what kind of person is able to come up with more than $100,000 at the drop of a hat:
As a politician, Mr. Daschle often struck a populist note, but his financial disclosure report shows that in the last two years, he received $2.1 million from a law firm, Alston & Bird; $2 million in consulting fees from a private equity firm run by a major Democratic fundraiser, Leo Hindery Jr. (which provided him with the car and driver); and at least $220,000 for speeches to health care, pharmaceutical and insurance companies. He also received nearly $100,000 from health-related companies affected by federal regulation.
Ah. Well, then.
This, of course, is on top of Obama's new Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner almost getting topedoed in the confirmation process because he failed to pay self-employment taxes for years.
The Geithner thing really stung for me, personally, because I'm self-employed too, and yet somehow I managed to pay those taxes I'm supposed to be paying as a self-employed person. And without even having someone pay me extra money, as Geithner did, to cover those taxes.
We've heard a lot excuses and will continue to hear a lot of excuses about how these were "honest mistakes," just stuff being "overlooked." And maybe that's true. But if one of the people who makes our laws -- Daschle, who was a U.S. Senator -- and the person whom we're supposed to believe is the very best person to run the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS -- that is, Geithner -- can "honestly" run afoul of the tax system, then something is seriously wrong with the tax system.
What I really wanted to hear, during the Geithner confirmation hearings, was one of his inquisitors asking him something like, "Will your recent honest run-in with the IRS make you more sympathetic to other people who make honest mistakes when it comes to tax errors? Will you do anything to make the tax system less complicated and more fair so that it's harder for honest mistakes to happen? Oh, and while you're at it, why not get around to advocating for leveling the playing field so that the rich pay at least their fair share?" But no one asked him that.
Even better would have been if Geithner, unprompted, said, "Gosh, I'm appalled that even an expert on the Treasury Department like me had no idea how complex, convoluted, and unfair IRS rules and procedures are. And I'm going to do everything in my power to see that that changes." But he didn't say that.
Either of those situations could have gone a long way toward making us believe that these were "honest" mistakes. The Obama team could have turned these embarrassments into opportunities.
But they didn't. Why not? Could it be because they don't want to change anything about the system as it is, which allows the very rich to get away with not paying even those paltry taxes they owe under the blatantly unfair existing system unless they're about to be publicly shamed over them? I'm not even talking about raising tax rates on the very rich and making sure they're taxed fairly on investment income and other overhauls the system needs. I'm just talking about reorganizing things so that the very rich at least pay the pocket change they are legally required at the moment to pay.
It seems like a no-brainer. It seems like the perfect project for the first geek administration: it's all about procedure and systems and process. If millions of people can play The Sims online, or have entire existences in Second Life, then surely a gang of accounting geeks can come up with a streamlined way for citizens to prepare and file their tax returns online, in a way that limits the "creative" accounting.
It would put a lot of people to work...
There's stuff in the Obama tax agenda about making it easier for middle-class people to pay taxes. But that's not the issue -- most middle-class people have no choice about paying, because their employers withhold taxes on their behalf. (And for those middle-class people who are self-employed, like me, our incomes are reported to the IRS by our clients, so the IRS already knows exactly how much we should be paying in taxes. How that could not have happened in Geithner's case is a mystery.) The issue is making sure that rich people don't get away with not paying. We've heard absolutely nothing about that. And I doubt we will.
Bwahahaha! Oh, Eric, you're so funny. Those people are the bad guys -- we expect them not to pay taxes. They're made a political platform out of the notion that the rich should not pay taxes. In what way is it surprising that they would then go on to not pay taxes?
Of course it's wrong that they did so. But that's another issue. When the administration that promised a new honesty and transparency can't seem to find a nominee who has paid up all their taxes, what do you think that suggests about the rich, whether they call themselves Democrat or Republican, and how they seem to feel -- as Leona Helmsley did -- that only little people pay taxes?
Did I say *one damn thing* about Obama's tax cuts here? Did I say *one damn thing* to suggest that I thought anything about it was "fudged"? Can you please please please explain to me what 98 percent of people getting tax cuts has to do with *rich people not paying taxes*? Or are you suggesting that because 98 percent of Americans have been promised a tax cut we should let the rich get away with inventing their own tax cuts?