Comments on: Politico: Please Excuse Our Timmy from Paying Taxes. He Was Confused.

By: Speed Limit

Speed Limit — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:57:59 +0000

The empty half of the glass is always at the top.

By: suek

suek — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:40:41 +0000

Additionally, are is fostert assuming that Geithert did his own taxes? No tax accountant?

I doubt it. And would you then assume that the accountant was incompetent? Looked at a W2 that had _no_ FICA taxes withheld and just said "oh well"? You know…that little box that says "FICA"? Just didn't notice that the amount was 0?

By: Cheesestick

Cheesestick — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 02:44:21 +0000

So fostert….since no one has the tax code memorized that means no one has to pay their taxes? I mean, at least not until they're ready? So when I get a letter from the IRS saying I owe, all I have to do is say "I don't have to pay this when you say because I don't have any of the tax code memorized."???

Gee, that's handy! In fact, I don't have the DMV manual memorized; that means if I get a ticket, I don't have to pay until I'm ready or until I can cite from memory the actual law it was I broke? So many applications….hey, I wonder if Gov. Blago knew or could recite the exact law that prohibits bargaining for a senate appointment?

What's funny is, I'm such a sucker, I was sitting here about to write a check for my license plate tags, but I don't really understand, nor can I cite the exact law that says I have to pay for these darn things every year. I bought them last year so that should cover me. Thanks fostert…you just saved me a few bucks!

By: Jimmie

Jimmie — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:09:48 +0000

It'd help if you got the name of the book right. There are two Chronicles, First and Second.

I'm guessing that you don't really know anything about this story. I'll give you the basics. Employees like him at the IMF do not have taxes withheld. They have to pay those taxes themselves (nuch like someone would if they were self-employed). Geithner got reminders from the IMF that he needed to pay the taxes (as did all the IMF employees like him). He didn't pay his taxes for four years.

He didn't make a computational error and underpay. He paid none of his withholding taxes.

He accepted a check from the IMF compensating him for a portion of the withholding taxes he was supposed to pay. He cashed those checks and didn't pay his taxes, even though the checks come with a form he needed to sign saying that he did pay those taxes.

He didn't pay his taxes. That wasn't a little oops. It was rash ignorance, elitist arrogance, or fraud. You can't dance around it.

By: fostert

fostert — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 18:34:41 +0000

So you couldn't quote me Chronicles 27:32, could you?

"In fact, I read earlier in the week that the get perhaps one a year."

That's because the IRS doesn't understand the rule either.

"The rules weren’t strange, not for someone in his position."

He was never an IRS agent, so why would he understand the rule? That would be the only job that would qualify you on arcane IRS rules. And they don't know the rules, either. Look, I'm an engineer, not an accountant, yet I understand accounting better than most accountants. I have to. It's what keeps me out of jail. But I still can't get it right, and neither can the accountants at the IRS. There is not a single person in the world that understands this crap. We just go to court over it. Or write whatever check the IRS says we should write. When that time came, he wrote it. And he paid the penalties. I don't even try to argue over the penalties. I can handle simple math like Spherical Bessel Functions, Fourier Transformations, and Complex Analysis, but I wouldn't ever hope to understand IRS Penalties. That's like turning lead into gold.

By: Jimmie

Jimmie — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:24:30 +0000

The rules weren't strange, not for someone in his position. it's not like the IMF has a raft of people falling afoul of them anyhow. In fact, I read earlier in the week that the get perhaps one a year. And he did it four years our of five, was it?

No, that's incompetence, arrogance, or fraud.

By: fostert

fostert — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:24:11 +0000

"knowing the rules is like memorizing every religious text ever written."

Oh, and those rules change every year. Imagine memorizing the entire Bible every year because it was rewritten every year. Now multiply that by a factor of 100. Get the idea?

By: fostert

fostert — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:16:54 +0000

He got tripped up by a really strange rule. As a business owner, I can understand. Hell, the IRS can't even understand its own rules. After all, there's several hundred thousand pages of rules. Try this one: without looking, quote me Chronicles 27:32 (you can use any translation). The Bible is much shorter than the tax code, and you are a devout Christian. If you want to criticize someone for not knowing every single detail of the tax code, you should at least be able to recite the entire Bible from memory. Let's put it this way, every year the IRS and I have conflicts about what those rules really mean. Sometimes they are right, and sometimes I'm right. But when it came to a court battle, I won. And I won because the IRS agent didn't understand the rule in question. But I'll give that agent a break, knowing the rules is like memorizing every religious text ever written.