I am sure that Timothy F. Geithner is qualified to be Secretary of the Treasury, and therefore leader of the Internal Revenue Service, notwithstanding his failure to pay his self-employment taxes while working at the International Monetary Fund in the early 2000s.  The Obama Team and Geithner call his failure to timely file them a "common mistake," stating he was technically "self-employed."  That’s a bunch of baloney, of course.   Geithner has an Ivy League education; and his excuse is essentially that because he never worked for himself before the IMF, he didn’t know the tax rules.  Just the type of guy we need at the Treasury Department to head off a depression……

     But self-employment taxes are also commonly known as a big feature on any tax return where the taxpayer is filing a "Schedule C" with IRS Form 1040.  In fact, self-employment taxes can often end up being the biggest single tax paid by a self-employed individual, since they are calculated on the side of the return that are not affected or reduced by common tax deductions.  It is not uncommon for a self-employed individual to owe very little tax on "income," but plenty of tax for self-employment.

     California deserves its share of the Federal tax dollar to, among other things, pay for roads and the costs of illegal immigration.     The Governor is right to call on the Obama Administration to be serious about infrastructure in California.  However, the eventual calls for tax increases that will come from Obama’s Treasury Department will surely be undercut with a point man that doesn’t even pay his own taxes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.