Tim Geithner, Self-Employment Taxes, Corruption Eruptions, Part 3

By Gary Starr For The Neville Awards
Posted Jan 13, 2009

The crap sandwich that is the incoming Obama administration has served up a second flawed nominee for the Fraudinator-in-Chief's cabinet.

Apparently Obama's choice to run the Treasury Department and help lead the nation out of recession failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001 to 2004.

Geithner failed to pay self-employment taxes for money he earned while working for IMF from 2001 to 2003, according to materials released by the Senate committee. In 2006, the IRS notified him that he owed $14,847 in self-employment taxes and $1,885 in interest from 2003 and 2004, which he paid after an audit.

The IRS waived Geithner's penalties for those tax years. We at Neville doubt that the IRS would be so generous with the proletariat.

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., tripping over himself to cover for, er defend, Geithner expressed the hope that he could be confirmed by Inauguration Day.

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

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., dismissed the events as "a few little hiccups," and said he was "not concerned at all" about the impact.

But some tax experts said the problem is not all 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 also has that most common problem that the elites have...the housekeeper/nanny illegal immigrant scandal.

He 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 documents indicated.

One of his housekeepers' legal authorization to work in the United States expired on July 15, 2005, and the person continued to work for Geithner until October of that year, the committee's report states.

So he screws up his own tax return and he doesn't know the immigration status of an employee working directly for him. Is this the guy we want managing the economy at Treasury?