Sheesh. At this point, it’s almost comical. Only it’s not. Following in the footsteps of Timothy Geithner, Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer, and Ron Kirk and Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius has announced that she made the dreaded “unintentional errors” on her tax returns. She recently corrected three years of tax returns and paid more than $7,000 in back taxes.
Sebelius is to appear at a hearing later in the week in front of the Senate Finance Committee, which will then vote to send her nomination to the Senate. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), the top Democrat on the Committee issued a statement of support, while Sen. Chuck Grassley (D-IA) indicated that he would not comment until after the hearing. Sebelius previously testified before the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
Unlike Daschle, who was just plain out wrong so far as I can tell, Sebelius’ errors seem relatively understandable.
Sebelius’ biggest error was insufficient documentation. She could not produce three of 49 letters from charitable organizations acknowledging receipt of gifts in excess of $250 (keep records, folks). Additionally, she could not document all of her business expenses.
The second error is a bit more complicated. Sebelius and her husband sold their home in 2006 for less money than they owed on their mortgage. As a result, they continued to pay the mortgage and a home improvement loan. Under the Tax Code, since they no longer owned the home, they were not entitled to the interest deductions on those loans, which they claimed anyway.
Sebelius hired an accountant to review her returns before her nomination. When the errors were discovered for the years 1995-1997, those returns were amended and the tax, including interest, was repaid. It was Sebelius who brought this to the attention of the committee, according to reports.
I’m still a little clueless about how the former governor of Kansas wouldn’t have a personal accountant who would know all of this, but I can see how the errors would be made by an ordinary citizen. Fair or not, as Jon Stewart commented during the presidential primaries, I don’t want an ordinary citizen in DC. I want to believe that the folks serving in Washington are a little bit smarter, a little bit wiser, a little bit more ahead of the game than the ordinary citizen. It appears that isn’t the case.
At this point, it is almost like AIG. Nothing is shocking anymore.
I comepletely agree with Adrienne.
Though, I doubt that only the people being nominated have tax “errors”, which leads me to suspect this tax neglect is a wide-spread problem of people in office. If that’s the case, then it’s only recent changes (possibly Washington’s new “transparency” position) that are making this information public, because I cannot imagine that previous cabinet appointees were completely clean and by-the-book. They were probably all just as guilty of tax issues as this set of nominees, it just wasn’t ever given to the public. This makes me kind of sad, but then again, Washington has always been corrupt in one way or another – just like politics in general.
Again, maybe we should nominate more folks as they are paying taxes they don’t owe. before 2005 the IRS must prove you intentionally filed a false return otherwise the time limit has past for the IRS to require you to pay.
This is a revenue enhancement.