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Change you can believe in? We're about to get a tax dodger for our new Treasury Secretary.
Obama retains entire Bush war team, Obama wants Hillary as Secretary of State.
Meet the new Boss- same as the old Boss. The joke is on us.

Peter wrote:Change you can believe in? We're about to get a tax dodger for our new Treasury Secretary.

DAR
Really? What taxes did he "dodge?" My understanding is he paid them along with the penalties when notified. It's happened to me, more than once. It's probably happened to most people who itemize.

Obama retains entire Bush war team,

DAR
No he doesn't. He retains Gates, a fellow I always thought was rather reasonable. I liked him ever since he cried in public about people dying.

Obama wants Hillary as Secretary of State.

DAR
Better than that, he already has Hillary as Secretary of State. She's been confirmed, nearly unanimously.

Meet the new Boss- same as the old Boss.

DAR
You think Obama is the same as Bush? Really? You don't detect any, subtle differences?

The joke is on us.

DAR
And the other option was....? McCain? Kucinich? Nader? Ross Perot?

Congratulations to the forum and me for getting post #13,000.

D.

Okay DAR- now for the truth- Geithner failed to pay self-employment taxes for 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004, even though he was sent documents telling him he had to do so. In 2006, Geithner got a document he couldn't ignore. The Internal Revenue Service sent Geithner a notice saying he had not paid his taxes for 2003 and 2004, so Geithner paid up. But he did not pay up for 2001 and 2002, even though he must have known that he skipped taxes for those years, too.

And HE wants to be head of the IRS?

If this guy was a Republican this board would be all over him.

Jonah

Jonah wrote:Okay DAR- now for the truth-...

DAR
Finally, the truth!

...Geithner failed to pay self-employment taxes for 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004, even though he was sent documents telling him he had to do so. In 2006, Geithner got a document he couldn't ignore. The Internal Revenue Service sent Geithner a notice saying he had not paid his taxes for 2003 and 2004, so Geithner paid up. But he did not pay up for 2001 and 2002, even though he must have known that he skipped taxes for those years, too.

DAR
Please take a moment to consider this short response in The Atlantic. It seems rather reasonable to me. Notice especially:

"The error was discovered by Obama's meticulous vetting team on November 21, even as it slipped by an accountant that Geithner had employed to figure this out."

And: "...it really has little bearing on the job he was nominated to do."

US tax law is nearly insane in it's complexity and constantly changing. I cut someone a whole lot of slack on this matter and do not consider that someone qualified to head the agency would need to know every (or even many) nits of tax law.

And HE wants to be head of the IRS?

DAR
Actually, Treasury Secretary, that's much higher up.

If this guy was a Republican this board would be all over him.

DAR
We'll never know but I don't think so. I can't speak for others but I wouldn't waste a moment on such an incidental nit. Not even close. On a scale from one to ten, from what I see so far, this barely makes a one. But any lurking Republicans are certainly welcome to "be all over him", for this. Please do. For one thing it shows how the bar has been lowered since Bush eh?

Let me give you another example. In December Doug posted this little example of how "Homeland Security can't even police their own home." Here it is:

***
Every few weeks for nearly four years, the Secret Service screened the IDs of employees for a Maryland cleaning company before they entered the house of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the nation's top immigration official.

The company's owner says the workers sailed through the checks -- although some of them turned out to be illegal immigrants.

Now, owner James D. Reid finds himself in a predicament that he considers especially confounding. In October, he was fined $22,880 after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators said he failed to check identification and work documents and fill out required I-9 verification forms for employees, five of whom he said were part of crews sent to Chertoff's home and whom ICE told him to fire because they were undocumented.

"Our people need to know," said the Montgomery County businessman. "Our Homeland Security can't police their own home. How can they police our borders?"
***

So the head of homeland security has illegal immigrants working, indirectly, for him. That's some good stuff. How do I view this? Consistently. I think it is really funny and very ironic but I don't think it is a big deal. Not even a little bit. Even though it is embarrassing, and telling of the extent of the US immigration situation, it's still a nit. I cut him a lot of slack on something like this as I do for what I see of Geithner's tax burp.

Maybe more dirt will show up. Unless that happens I don't see it getting much/any traction.

D.

Darrel wrote: For one thing it shows how the bar has been lowered since Bush eh?

Let me give you another example. In December Doug posted this little example of how "Homeland Security can't even police their own home."
...So the head of homeland security has illegal immigrants working, indirectly, for him. That's some good stuff.

DOUG
Other ironic things in the Bush administration:
The company hired to build part of the fence between the U.S. and Mexico was caught using illegal alien workers. About a third of the company's workforce was illegal aliens.

Bush sends John Bolton to be our U.N. ambassador even though Bolton doesn't believe in the legitimacy of the U.N. and doesn't recognize its legitimate existence. "There's no such thing as the United Nations," John Bolton declared in 1994.

The conservatives have NO room to talk regarding qualifications for jobs.

Jonah wrote:But he did not pay up for 2001 and 2002, even though he must have known that he skipped taxes for those years, too.

And, as the subject of an audit, he must have known that the statute of limitations had expired after three years, meaning that the IRS couldn't charge or penalize him for those years.

Either you didn't know this because you have very little understanding of the system, or you did know this but left it out so you could spin some more. Neither way looks good for you.

Jonah wrote:If this guy was a Republican this board would be all over him.

It's one thing for the high-and-mighty righties to play the partisan persecution card, but I find it particularly funny that it's being played here when the subject is non-partisan.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said he still hoped Geithner could be confirmed on Inauguration Day, asking senators for unanimous consent to skirt rules and schedule a hearing as early as Friday.

"These errors were not intentional; they were honest mistakes," Baucus said after he and other committee members met with Geithner behind closed doors on Tuesday.

It was not clear Tuesday whether committee Republicans would sign off on Baucus' request for a quick hearing.

The panel's senior Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, hasn't decided whether the revelations are reason enough to oppose Geithner, said spokeswoman Jill Kozeny. He believes they are "serious, and whether or not it's disqualifying is to be determined," she said.

Another prominent Republican, however, spoke up for Geithner. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, another committee member, said he continues to support the nominee.

"I have no problem," Hatch told Fox News. "He's a very, very competent guy."

After senators met with Geithner, the panel released 30 pages of documents detailing his tax errors -- and also how he came to employ a housekeeper whose legal immigrant work status had briefly lapsed in 2005

RELEASED 30 PAGES OF DOCUMENTS DETAILING HIS MISTAKES! DAMN! THIS IS SOME KIND OF COVER-UP.

GEITHNER PAID SOME OF HIS TAXES...THERE'S TWO PARTS TO THE SOCIAL SECURITY OR FICA TAXES....EMPLOYEE PART AND EMPLOYER PART....REST OF STORY:

"Geithner and his supporters have said his mistake was a common one for people hired by international organizations that don't pay the employer share of Social Security taxes. The IRS estimated in 2007 that as many as half those employees had made tax-filing mistakes, and offered a group settlement to let them correct the errors. Geithner told Obama's team and senators that an accountant had reviewed his tax returns after Geithner prepared them and didn't discover the problem.

But some tax experts said the problem is not that common.

Tom Ochsenschlager, vice president of tax for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, said it would be difficult for someone preparing a tax return for a self-employed person to skip the Social Security and Medicare tax lines.**

"It's such a basic mistake that I kind of wonder if we know all the facts," Ochsenschlager said of Geithner's situation.

Geithner filed amended tax returns for 2001 through 2006 after Obama's team reviewed his records.

WHOLE STORY HERE.

GOT ANY MORE RWINGNUT SPIN, LIES, AND HALF TRUTHS JONAH???? THE ONLY KIND OF STUFF YOU GUYS CAN RUN ON...

** I GOT NEWS FOR MR. OCHSENSCHLAGER. The same CPA did my return for 8 years. He made the same mistake each year on my self-employment tax. Finally, when my non-employer (principal)
switched Certified Public Accountants it was then that my former Certified Public Accountant's errors in my self-employment taxes were discovered.
It's a very common mistake. With over 20,000 pages of tax codes I consider there is no such thing as a correct tax return. So does the IRS.

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