Treasury nominee Timothy Geithner had several tax issues that are mentioned in this matter of fact Senate Report.
Among Tim Geithner's chief tax problems are:
Geithner prepared his own return in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2005. Wednesday Geithner disclosed that he used TurboTax.1. Geithner’s failure to pay self-employment taxes in the years 2001-2004 on his IMF income.
2. Geithner’s taking a dependent care credit for the costs of overnight camp in 2001, 2004, and 2005.
I wondered how plausible it was that TurboTax wouldn’t prompt Geithner adequately on these issues (there was also a suggestion that he may have been misled by improper advice from a tax preparer, despite the repeated information released from the IMF on his need to pay self-employment taxes).
To explore these issues, I installed both the 2004 and 2005 TurboTax on my new Dell Latitude E4200 (2.25 lb. notebook).
SELF EMPLOYMENT TAXES.
If Geithner’s IMF income were entered from a 1099-MISC (which it wasn’t), the self-employment tax would have been automatically added; he would have had to override it manually to avoid the SE tax.
But that is not how the IMF reported Geithner’s income. They used a W-2, with “NONE” or blanks in all boxes except wages. In both the 2004 and 2005 TurboTax program, if you enter income only from a W-2, it does NOT add that income to schedule C and it does NOT compute a self-employment tax.
So, while technically TurboTax did not make a “mistake,” TurboTax would have neither computed the SE tax automatically, nor would it have prompted Geithner appropriately that he needed to pay that SE tax. In other words, any knowledge of Geithner’s SE liability would not have come from the usual TurboTax guided interview, but rather from the IMF.
OVERNIGHT SUMMER CAMP.
Geithner took a dependent care credit for the costs of overnight camp in 2001, 2004, and 2005. If one takes the normal interview process in TurboTax, it just prompts you for the amount. If you are “Not sure if your expenses qualify,” you can click “Guide Me.” The steps involved in that sub-interview do not ask about camp, but rather covers information about the child and the parents.
Screenshot from 2005 TurboTax
(click once to open, and then again to read)
If, however, you click the button “Learn more about this topic,” then you see a small number of questions and answers, the last of which clearly states that overnight camps do not qualify for the credit. Accordingly, if Geithner were curious about whether these camp expenses qualified, one of the two links he might have clicked would have given him an answer.
Screenshot from 2005 TurboTax
(click once to open, and then again to read)
Again, while TurboTax did not make a “mistake,” TurboTax would not have prompted Geithner specifically about the overnight summer camp. This time, however, the link “Learn more about this topic” would have supplied the correct answer. But if he didn’t click on this link, TurboTax would not have informed Geithner that overnight camp didn’t qualify for the child care credit.
CONCLUSION:
Contrary to the comments of some on the web (via Instapundit), neither of the two major errors in Geithner’s returns that I explored would have been covered by interactive prompts in the 2004 or 2005 versions of TurboTax.
Other tax issues, which I am not commenting on, include these:
1. Geithner’s failing to refile in 2006 and pay back self-employment taxes from 2001 and 2002 after he was audited on that issue for the 2003 and 2004 tax years. He waited until he was nominated to head up Treasury to pay these taxes that the IRS could no longer demand because of the statute of limitations.
2. Geithner’s failing to refile and pay back tax credits for overnight camp in 2001, 2004, and 2005, when he was informed in 2007 (or 2006) by an accountant that his credit for overnight camp was not allowed. Apparently, in 2007 the 2004 and 2005 returns were not quieted by the statute of limitations, though the 2004 return had been previously audited by the IRS.
3. Geithner’s failing to report and pay a 10% penalty on an early withdrawal from a government pension.
I'd been rooting for "flubbed oath", but this might get even "can't see the fever swap for all the the weeds"-ier.
Did you bother to read the post?
People have claimed that Geithner would have had to ignore prompted questions or override computations made by TurboTax. I proved he wouldn't have had to ignore any questions or override any computations.
This post is a DEFENSE of an Obama nominee whose honesty has been challenged in Senate hearings today and on the web.
You must realize that many of us are interested in what happened, not just whether something helps or hurts Obama.
Jim Lindgren
How could he miss the 10% penalty on an early withdrawal? That's exactly the kind of tax policy issue a Treasury Secretary needs to be concerned about.
And so far, no one in the Senate (and not Geithner himself) seems to have the slightest interest in raising the obvious question: do we really need to have tax laws that are so incomprehensible that even a professional economist cannot be held responsible for understanding them?
Once again, great!
Strike the "anti-obama" from my first sentence and, on its remaining legs, the dismissive attitude stands.
These sorts've posts represent the what we'll call the "Minituative Style in American Politics".
If all you have to say is an ad hominem, please stop commenting here.
I have done my own taxes for decades, and I am a litigation lawyer who has done a few tax cases in a 30+ year period. There is no way that you make these errors innocently, particularly the failure to include self-employment tax. There are two lines on the 1040 for the self-employment tax, one on the front side for the adjustment to income from one-half the tax and one on the back side for the tax itself. For most people receiving a 1099, the two components of the total tax paid will be from the schedule and the self-employment tax. You can't miss it. As for the camp expenses, Geithner was stretching to claim a credit about which he had to know better.
Geithner's actions concerning these items showed that trustworthiness is NOT a strong feature of his character.
He's a candidate for high administrative office. This suggests he doesn't question what he reads, but just blindly signs on the dotted line. That's seriously disturbing to me.
Actually, I heard at least one Republican Senator make this point at the hearing. Perhaps it would have been emphasized more if this issue (at least the IMF part of it) did not appear to be so straightforward. After all, the IMF (as I understand it) gave Geithner money for the purposes of paying his taxes, told him that he needed to use the money to pay his taxes, and made him sign a form that acknowledged his obligation. It really shouldn't take a post-graduate degree to understand this particular obligation.
He could win over Americans if he promised to give us the same benefit of the doubt that we're supposed to give him. But he won't.
The guy is a cheat.
If it were simply the Turbo Tax issues I could give him a pass, but not with all the other issues as well.
Since you bring it up, though, what is your reason for considering this to be an insignificant issue? We have a nominee who, by his own admission, repeatedly made a really stupid error in filing his taxes, a mistake that happened to give him a significant financial benefit. We can take his word that it was an unintentional mistake, but there isn’t much beyond his word to substantiate that claim (although Professor Lindgren’s post at least corroborates part of Geithner’s story). At best, we have a nominee who has demonstrated a tendency to overlook key aspects of his own financial affairs, not exactly something to be desired in a Treasury Secretary.
Under normal circumstances, this would seem to be more than sufficient reason to vote against Geithner’s confirmation. We are not in normal circumstances, however, and I tend to come down on the side on letting this slide. Unless a Senator can identify another plausible candidate that he or she can say would clearly be preferable to Geithner, it is better to defer to Obama’s choice for this difficult (perhaps impossible) assignment.
Nevertheless, this is an important issue that deserves discussion. There are plenty of silly posts (some intentionally so, others not) that merit silly responses. This is not one of them.
Not reading the instructions (or following all the turbotax questionnaires which is what they really are in a different, more user friendly format)is carelessness at best, willful ignorance at worst. I walk through at least one complex tax scenario about some income question every time I do my taxes and I suspect most people do. If they take a credit or a deduction, they read ALL the instructions to make sure that that they really can. Do we really want a guy who doesn't read the regular print, let alone the fine print?
And mm and Sir Bill miss the point too, for a similar reason. He didn't fail to pay income tax; he failed to pay the self-employment tax.
Please, let's not pretend this guy flubbing his taxes is what this is about. If he had corrected his mistake when the IRS brought it up, this would be a chance for political points, but very little substance. The real issue, at least to me, is the fact that he did not repay his 2001-02 shortfalls because they were outside the statute of limitations -- until the Transition Team told him to.
If he didn't know that the self-employed have to pay a double dose of payroll taxes, I have to question his qualifications to be Treasury Secretary, the overseer and supervisor of the tax collection system. That's pretty basic knowledge.
If he did know that he was required under law to pay then the only possibilities are that he failed to exercise diligence in reviewing his taxes or he knew full well that the return was not accurate and chose to sign it anyhow, to his benefit.
None of the options cast a favorable light on his suitability for the office to which he is nominated. Even the best explanation - that it was a Turbo Tax problem - still doesn't say good things about the guy's suitability for the position.
The statute of limitations issue for the 2001 and 2002 years is pretty interesting. Sen. Jon Kyl tried to bust Geithner's chops on this - pontificating "When did you first think about paying the late taxes for 2001 and 2002?" - but then contradicted himself by acknowledging that sure, any taxpayer is entitled to the benefit of the statute of limitations. Which is certainly my position. If the 2001 and 2002 returns were filed (as they were), and it was a non-willful mistake (the evidence points that way), and there was no fraud or substantial omission of income or anything else that extends or eliminates the 3-year civil tax statute of limitations, then why shouldn't he be able to take advantage of the statute of limitations? I understand the optics, but still.
A) He deliberately and knowingly neglected to pay self-employment tax on his IMF income
OR
B) He is unaware of basic, simple, everyday financial operations. How can one accept a paying position without knowing whether the income is subject to self-employment tax? Only a complete rube would be this clueless.
Neither option is attractive in a Treasury secretary, but I'm betting on A). Actually, I'm hoping it's A, as I'll take petty corruption over ineptitude any day. But the bold-faced lying disturbs me - weren't we supposed to leave this behind on Tuesday?
You are free to decide that he can be Treasury Secretary and a tax cheat.
I bet on A as well. I started paying self employment taxes when I was 24 years old and working as an independent contractor. My wife does some occasional consulting work and in a few weeks I will be doing our taxes and figure out how much she owes in SE taxes/how much less our refund will be because of self employment taxes. The idea that this man did not know he owed the taxes is extremely hard to believe. I have always prepared my own taxes and the idea that someone with his background would be unaware of how self employment taxes work is silly.
That does not mean that he will not do a good job as treasury secratary, but do not pretend he is not a tax cheat.
I would have liked one of the Senators to ask him what he understands the laws regarding SS to be.
Good research. Although you should get rid of your scare quote sentence.
...techincally, Turbotax did not make a "mistake"...
There is no "technically" about it. The software processed what it was told. And it was told that this income was on a W-2 and that no SE tax was due. This was untrue.
I would guess that Geithner simply thought he had plausible deniability going for him, and that no one would ever notice, unless he was audited. And he already had a prepared excuse. How he ever worked up the gaul to seek reimbursement for this tax he never paid, however, is beyond me. He is either an outright thief, or staggeringly uninterested in his own finances. Either should be enough to reject his nomination.
That said, I have reluctantly reached the conclusion that he needs to be confirmed given the current economic troubles.
It's simple, like 2+2
As for the minutiae charge: Maybe in an ideal world the detailed issue of what Turbo Tax did or didn't show shouldn't have been raised in the first place. But once an issue has been raised and reached some prominence (as hear), carefully setting the details straight is always a valuable service.
I have gotten error messages when my withholding reported did not correspond to the total income. (But then I have used TaxCut most recently.)
Betcha TurboTax is redoing its 2008 program as we speak.
But my first point is the salient one. What tax paying American puts in a zero in a tax box and doesn't know it?
Some of Geithner's mistakes were pretty obvious, and it certainly doesn't speak well of him, but I can sympathize with him on a few points.
Namely: the 10% penalty for early withdrawals from a retirement account. First, and most broadly: why is there a penalty in the first place? Kinda nanny-state, if you ask me. But second, and more practically: I withdrew a small amount of money from a retirement account a few years ago, thought that I had paid the 10% penalty at the time of the withdrawal, and found out only after getting computer-audited three years later that I had not. I went back and looked at the forms that I could find, and still can't figure out where the end-of-year documents I received for tax purposes make it clear that I had not already paid the penalty.
Also: the mistake that I described above is one that I may well have made the following year, too. I've known this for several months now, and I should look into it. But I haven't had the time. Nor can I find all of the relevant records. I've moved three times in the past four years, I didn't do all my own packing, and, yes, I'm not inherently a particularly organized person. Nevertheless, I'm sure I'll get to it before the statute of limitations expires.
Does this make me a criminal?
Could you expand on this? It DOES sound like something that Turbotax would cover.
As all the commentors have said, none of this tax law is arcane. It's just a matter of following directions and looking up directions if you know you have something nonstandard like IMF pay or dependent care expenses. The IRS help booklets really are quite good on these things.
I use Turbotax every year.
All Geithner had to do on the "deduction-for-overnight-camp" business was type the word "camp" in the search box. Or, hell, do it in Google. Utterly trivial.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
This guy is a first-class weasel.
For other employers, failure to withhold taxes from W-2 employees and remit the money on the quarterly deadlines results in substantial fines and penalties. I can't believe no one has commented on this here. It is extraordinarily common for failing companies to get behind on payments to the IRS. There are no immediate penalties for failing to remit your payments to the IRS -- it takes them awhile to catch up with you. Employers pay rent, utilities and salaries immediately because the alternative is eviction, shut-off and employees not coming to work. If the IRS doesn't get around to the company until after they go broke, then there is no money for the tax payments. Doesn't anybody here have legal experience cleaning up the messes of failed companies? I can't believe that there are no lawyers here wondering how the IMF gets away with this.
Since 1986 the IRS has been very aggressive about companies which treat employees as independent contractors. So XYZ Corp hires a computer programmer as a consultant, and pays him an hourly rate, and gives him a 1099 each year. The programmer pays quarterly estimated taxes, by all of the due dates, and then in April files a return with a Schedule-C with only legitimate business expenses, and calculates and pays "income tax" and "self-employment tax" on the income. (Well, actually, the April return is when the tax is calculated. The tax has already been paid, with the quarterly estimates.) This contracter is very conservative about overpaying estimates and so has a substantial overpayment each year which he applies to the next year's taxes. (i.e. he gives the government a substantial interest-free loan.) So then the IRS comes and rules that the programmer was not a (1099) contractor but a (W-2) employee. They fine the XYZ Corp an amount equal to 125% of the money that XYZ Corp should have withheld -- even though the programmer paid all of the relevant taxes in full and on time.
Every "how-to" book on running your own business warns you about this -- if there is any question about whether people working for you fit under the common-law definition of "independent contractor" or not, then hire them as w-2 employees, withhold their taxes, and send the money to the IRS. Those "how-to" books never seemed to have considered the idea of not withholding and then giving the employees w-2's at the end of the year and not 1099's.
The IMF and World Bank have a very unusual status as employers. Its almost like working as an expat, as I understand it.
I gave up TurboTax because through the prompting it doubled one of my estimated tax payments, and I ended up overstating what I'd paid. Of course the IRS caught it, but I am the one who should have caught it when I proofread the forms. Regardless of what TurboTax did, it was my responsibility and not only did I accept the penalty, I immediately checked other returns for the same error. I switched to TaxCut, which requires me to do much more by myself, but I'd rather have it that way.
I can't imagine choosing anyone to oversee the IRS who relies totally on tax software for their own complex taxes. I would hope that person could accurately do their taxes by hand, on the paper forms (and suffer all the pain that goes along with it). It is ridiculous that they are blowing this off as an insignificant mistake. He should be tossed out for this and the other so-called errors. A simple error at the national level can have serious consequences.
Given that Geithner has not even been appointed yet, perhaps it would be better no to appoint him than to force him to resign later for other malfeasance or stupidity.
If what Mabula and others have reported is correct (i.e., that he was given a bonus to pay the self-employment taxes and had to sign papers acknowledging that and his responsibility to pay the self-employment taxes) then the only charitable conclusion is that he is a tax cheat.
Otherwise, he is so grossly incompetent that he should probably have a guardian appointed to take care of him. In either case, he is unfit for this job or any other job that requires competence and honesty.
For anybody who has not read it, this PDF explains what Geithner was told by the IMF, and what he should have done.
also "better no to appoint" sb "better not to appoint"
Hubris/self-delusion is a critical flaw in politics. Bad math/greed is much less so.
The much more important question raised is why the IRS systems couldn't immediately detect Geithner's error. Perhaps we should bring back Charles Rossotti or appoint some modern h4x0r as IRS Commish.
It's more like working as an expat that is a citizen of another country. American citizens living abroad still have to pay their own taxes. IMF employees are reimbursed for theirs.
I am sure you are right about the reaction had this occurred during the Bush Administration. My rule of thumb has been (and will remain) that I change the names of parties to see if I feel the same way.
In other words, if President Bush would get a pass for the same conduct, so will President Obama. If I would criticize President Bush for the same conduct, I will criticize President Obama. That way I can retain intellectual honesty without becoming a partisan hack.
Why is that, exactly? He doesn't have a stellar track record with the other management opportunities he has had. His education isn't impressive. He seems to have charisma as his main qualification, which does not impress me in the least.
Notwithstanding the above - This is a sideshow.
Did this guy have anything to do with loosening regulations?What did he acheive at he IMF?
What was his role in the bailouts starting with Fanniemae? Was there any conflict of interest?
No, but it means you're probably not bright enough to be Secretary of the Treasury. Next.
Seriously? We want someone who's not financially savvy enough to figure out his own taxes trying to allocate trillions in federal largess? Seriously?
I'll comment because Jim's post is the closest I've seen to addressing the true issue, (highlighting the W2 vs 1099 issue) and I think this comment reflects much of the confusion. I am a CPA and have dealt with IMF employees, although I am not an expert on the law itself.
IMF employees get W2s because they are employees, not contractors, and by law employees receive W2s. They are treated differently in regard to FICA for some unique reason stemming from either the IMF's international status or their quasi-government status, or both. Regardless of why, congress and the IRS have determined that IMF employees will be treated differently for pension purposes. My guess is that this allows foreign employees to remain in and contribute to their home country pension plans, and this is justified by claiming the IMF is not considered US but akin to an embassy, but that's not relevant to the Geithner issue.
Regardless of the justification for the rule, I know how US citizens are supposed to treat the income. And because the circumstance is so unusual the process is not necessarily intuitive. Even so, if you enter the correct information you still get the correct output. In most versions of tax software there is a box to check to make a W2 subject to SE tax. Perhaps Jim can verify that the relevant years of Turbo Tax has this feature. Some programs identify this as a potential error and require confirmation (perhaps Jim can test this also). The most confusing element is that the W2 itself says zero or none in those boxes. You have to know to report them differently on your return.
None of this excuses Geithner because the IMF publishes a booklet describing the tax treatments, and my clients described the considerable lengths the IMF went through to inform people about the correct way to report. My point is that people should not confuse this with receiving a 1099 and not paying SE tax. The process is different, although in my mind they more than made up for the difficulty with education. None of this of course speaks to how relevant the issue is. But since Jim is 98% there the two percent for checking the box seems easy.
I am surprised an expert (real, not the TV impersonators)hasn't spoken up and raised these issues, but if they have I haven't seen it.
Weird. I've been using a CPA for years and he doesn't do stuff by hand. He uses some sort of professional tax software (it looks like it was written in 1995). The other CPA that helped me with a $30k dispute with the IRS didn't fill out forms by hand either. And he was an ex-IRS agent.
The best comment about his other qualities was said long ago by Georges Clemenceau: "The cemeteries are full of indispensable men."
I agree with Mabula, AFAIK Greithner didn’t even use Turbo Tax which wouldn’t be a defense for anyone who had relied on software to prepare their taxes. The damaging issue isn’t that Greithner just didn’t pay the required withholding on his taxes for four years – it’s that his employer told him he had to pay them and provided him with an allowance specifically to cover those obligations which he had to apply for and sign a statement acknowledging his responsibility to pay them.
Regardless of whether the initial failure to pay the taxes was wilfull or not, Geithner looks bad when he tries to answer (or tries to avoid answering) the questions about his mental state once there was no question that he owed the taxes (and paid '03 and '04) and yet didn't pay them for '01 and'02.
I can't figure this out either. Geithner's entire background appears to be centered around studying developing economies. What about his background makes him qualified for the job?
Secondly, even if Geithner is the "best" person for the job, in terms of smarts/knowledge, clearly he's not the only qualified person in that respect.
Thirdly, even if I concede Geithner made a mistake (one he should have known about) regarding the self-employment & camp issue and that he's the most knowledgeable person for the job, I do not concede he's got the ethics and attention to detail to be entrusted to this office. The failure to pay the 10% early withdrawal penalty highlights this even further.
If Geithner can not be trusted to uphold his basic civic duty to pay his taxes correctly, how can we entrust him with high office?
Mr. Geithner is a financial professional, what standard of care should be applied to his reporting taxes? Why does he get off scott-free by not paying any penalties?
I’m certain the time-value of money would render his late payment less of a burden than if he paid timely (as do the vast majority of us.)
Mr. Geithner is not even a good tax cheat, how can we have confidence that he will be a good Sec. Tres. (not that I consider one’s ability to cheat the tax code as qualification for the position.)
...which is why the IMF sends out forms each year, explaining to their employees that they have to pay the taxes. They also send a check for a big chunk of those taxes (I would assume about half of them, to keep in line with what most employers have to match when managing W-2s). Sure, Geithner can blow off Turbo Tax for not catching the error, but he deliberately didn't pay taxes that he had to know he should pay.
The really odd thing is that Geithner used an off-the-shelf tax program, when he knew he had a very odd tax situation. A smart man would have gone to a tax lawyer (or at least a very experience tax preparer) with the specialty knowledge that would have kept him from screwing up this badly - or from getting caught at it. It's like a doctor trying to self-treat a serious heart condition by taking aspirin. Generic aspirin.
I am self-employed, pay self-employment tax, and am not a lawyer. While I agree that the overnight camp issue seems to be an error which is beyond an innocent mistake, I can see making the mistake on the IMF income, especially if it was reported under a W-2. What sort of notice does the IMF send out? And if this affects all employees, why doesn't the IRS routinely assess these taxes?
Here is a PDF of the information the IMF sends out:
http://tinyurl.com/7u59c9
Look, I'm not going to say that Geithner didn't screw up, because he obviously did. But everyone who keeps jumping in to say, "Well, my job did the same thing, and I handled it correctly, so why didn't he?" is simply ignorant of the facts. Unless you worked for an international institution, you didn't face the same situation as Geithner. It's a unique case, in which he's a regular W-2 employee but the employer is not required to pay the employer's share of the payroll taxes, and so the employee has to pay them as though he's self-employed, even though he's actually an employee.
The law hasn't changed. The self-employed still have to pay "double" for FICA (they're not really paying double, they're just paying the portion that's normally hidden from wage employees because their employer pays it - no serious economist contends that those taxes don't result in decreased income for employees).
Not weird. A CPA could do taxes by hand if required, but uses the professional software (not <$100 TurboTax) as a tool to fill in forms and do the calculations. Any CPA that relies on tax software for anything other than convenience should not be doing taxes.
Amen! I'm stunned that this even requires debate. Toss him!
I can see his being ignorant of the requirement to pay self-employment tax — just. (For most of us, having to enter a "0" for withheld tax on a W-2 would prompt a question or two, but it's not irrational to trust TurboTax.)
But once he was audited, he obviously knew that his taxes for 2001 and 2002 were underpaid. How could they not be? He didn't go back and recalculate them only because he wasn't under legal compulsion to do it. It just isn't plausible that he didn't know he had underpaid. Audits concentrate the mind wonderfully.
I've used TurboTax every year since the infancy of the program in the early 1990s, when my pinhead brain overloaded while trying to manually calculate my self-employed wife's required quarterly estimated payments and long-form Schedule C. And I quickly learned to double-check TT, because it sometimes output really strange results. Later on I came to detest the allegedly-improved "interview" format option, because some of the questions required diving deep into the help functions or the IRS instructions to figure out what the program was really asking for. TT is still not perfect. I did our 2008 taxes using TT this weekend, and only because I double-checked each line on the form did I happen to notice that for some reason this year TT didn't automatically import and add last year's state income tax refund back as Federal income. If I'd just hit "e-file" after running TT's own software-based error check without manually eyeballing the output, I would never have noticed this simple glitch. But the IRS would have.
I am confident that if you just blindly bull through TT's interview format, it would never pick up that you worked for an international organization like the IMF/WB/UN or a foreign embassy that isn't required to withhold U.S. taxes. And Clippy the Computer would happily spit out results that, assuming you weren't completely asleep at the keyboard or had ever glanced at your pay statement, should obviously strike you as inane. Which does raise a question about how much care Mr. Geithner was taking with his taxes.
But on the bright side, at least he apparently didn't pay his nanny off the books, right?
Yes, that's exactly what he ought to have said. The thing is, what he actually did say isn't really plausible.
You look at the amount you asked to withdraw. Then you look at the amount on the check you received. Then you compute the difference. If the difference isn't 30% (20% withheld for taxes plus 10% withheld for penalty) then you didn't pay the penalty. The fact that they didn't print this in big red letters doesn't change that fact. It's our responsibility to be aware of the rules and verify what is going on.
This kind of "it's boring" comment frequently arises on message boards, including this one, and I have never understood why. If a person is uninterested in a particular topic or considers it unimportant, why does the person spend the time to state this fact in a discussion devoted to that topic?
It would be more efficient if people post comments on topics in which they are interested, and do not post comments on topics in which they are not interested.
He's a chisler alright. He might be a financial genius (although that's debatable as well-- how did we get to where we are if he's so bright?), but he's a poor liar. That might be handy in the future-- we'll know when he's lying.
2. As a professional in the business, he should have known better, period.
3. IMF told him AND reimbursed him for the taxes paid, or was it estimated? If it was reimbursement, he HAD to have calculated the amount! If he calculated the amount, then he implicitly knew it was due. There is simply no excuse, he tried to cheat.
4. Sometimes corporations make it hard to calculate your taxes even when they try to make it easier. I had problems every year calculating child care credit because my spouse was employed by the company we got the care from. They included the in-kind child care above $5000 as income and arranged withholding, but didn't adjust the numbers on the W-2 to reflect. It was interesting to say the least, especially after we were audited and had to produce the actual EOY pay stub to prove we weren't cheating. Note to all - keep that end of year pay stub - it breaks down everything that the W-2 doesn't and make it easier to prove your case.
4. Silver lining - if the TREASURY SECRETARY can't figure out his personal taxes, maybe we need to revisit the tax code and simplify it.
4. This is all moot anyway, but still....
As someone who used to do his return the old fashioned way (by typing in the numbers on the forms), this method is more familiar and easier than running through the interview process.
Can all these damnable left wing busybodies who think high taxes are such a good idea at least get around to paying their own when they qualify?
You aren't going to get a more conservative guy for this spot.
I have reluctantly reached the conclusion that he needs to be confirmed given the current economic troubles.
Bush Administration: 9/11 changed everything!Obama Administration: The financial crisis changed everything!
You are apparently into misinformation to obscure the fact that Geithner engaged in conscious tax evasion and thereby advance Geithner's confirmation. If Geithner had received a W-2, as you say, he would have been an employee, Social Security and Medicare taxes would have been taken out of his paycheck and he would not have had to deal with self-employment tax. But Geithner was not in that situation. Geithner was treated as an independent contractor by the IMF, and that status entailed his receiving a 1099 for self-employment income and his needing to deal with self-employment tax, which he did for years by not paying it.
Geithner received a W-2, "as I say," and was in fact an employee. He had to deal with self-employment tax because working for the IMF is a special situation, unlike ordinary employment. He did not receive a 1099.
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Comment Policy: We reserve the right to edit or delete comments, and in extreme cases to ban commenters, at our discretion. Comments must be relevant and civil (and, especially, free of name-calling). We think of comment threads like dinner parties at our homes. If you make the party unpleasant for us or for others, we'd rather you went elsewhere. We're happy to see a wide range of viewpoints, but we want all of them to be expressed as politely as possible.
We realize that such a comment policy can never be evenly enforced, because we can't possibly monitor every comment equally well. Hundreds of comments are posted every day here, and we don't read them all. Those we read, we read with different degrees of attention, and in different moods. We try to be fair, but we make no promises.
And remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.