36 Obama aides owe $833,000 in back taxes 36 Comments Posted 01/26/2012 08:18 AM ET Pete Souza / White House (Obama addresses his White House staff, file) How embarrassing this must be for President Obama, whose major speech theme so far this campaign season has been that every single American, no matter how rich, should pay their "fair share" of taxes. Because how unfair -- indeed, un-American -- it is for an office worker like, say, Warren Buffet's secretary to dutifully pay her taxes, while some well-to-do people with better educations and higher incomes end up paying a much smaller tax rate. Or, worse, skipping their taxes altogether. A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama's executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven't paid any share, let alone their fair share. Previous reports have shown how well-paid Obama's White House staff is, with 457 aides pulling down more than $37 million last year. That's up seven workers and nearly $4 million from the Bush administration's last year. Nearly one-third of Obama's aides make more than $100,000 with 21 being paid the top White House salary of $172,200, each. The IRS' 2010 delinquent tax revelations come as part of a required annual agency report on federal employees' tax compliance. Turns out, an awful lot of folks being paid by taxpayers are not paying their own income taxes. The report finds that thousands of federal employees owe the country more than $3.4 billion in back taxes. That's up 3% in the past year. That scale of delinquency could annoy voters, hard-pressed by their own costs, fears and stubbornly high unemployment despite Joe Biden's many promises. The tax offenders include employees of the U.S. Senate who help write the laws imposed on everyone else. They owe $2.1 million. Workers in the House of Representatives owe $8.5 million, Department of Education employees owe $4.3 million and over at Homeland Security, 4,697 workers owe about $37 million. Active duty military members owe more than $100 million. The Treasury Department, where Obama nominee Tim Geithner had to pay up $42,000 in his own back taxes before being confirmed as secretary, has 1,181 other employees with delinquent taxes totaling $9.3 million. As usual, the Postal Service, with more than 600,000 workers, has the most offenders (25,640), who also owe the most -- almost $270 million. Veterans Affairs has 11,659 workers owing the IRS $151 million while the Energy Department that was so quick to dish out more than $500 million to the Solyndra folks has 322 employees owing $5 million. The country's chief law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, has 2,069 employees who are nearly $17 million behind in taxes. Like Operation Fast and Furious, Attorney General Eric Holder has apparently missed them too. As with ordinary people, the IRS attempts to negotiate back-tax payment plans with all delinquents, whose names cannot be released. But according to current federal law, the only federal employees who can be fired for not paying taxes are IRS workers.
How cute. You found a column written by Laura Bush's former press secretary. Surely he remembers that this tired old story that gets trotted out every year.
I guess I'm dense because I still don't know what your point is. How does Obama wanting to raise taxes impact the folks that owe the back taxes? It doesn't absolve them of those or future taxes.
Is it the president's duty to know the personal tax situation of every person who works for him? Does Obama not want these people to pay their back taxes or is he in any way, shape or form aiding or abetting it? Does Obama pay HIS taxes? Stupid non-issue.
I would think at POTUS, one would like to set the example for the rest of the country and make sure his house was clean and all those in the government would not have these issues. I think that should be the standard for any government worker, not to mention or even single out the highest paid members in the West Wing. It should be the standard, I guess the standards for this administration are quite low. Big indicator of what type of work they perform and how they real about responsiblity. So yea, no the President shouldn't care......
I think all federal employees combined owe around 5 billion in unpaid taxes. I really dont understand why federal employees dont get paid an after-tax salary. This would make the most sense to me so that this is never an issue. You work for the politburo, you get an after-tax salary, no deductions, nothing, that's it. it prevents all this other crap. Clearly, the government doesnt care for the children because this money could be used to feed all the ones that the republicans are trying to starve to death.
They just sit around the oval with a towel covering the bottom of the door just smoking out!!! Laughing at how they are screwing the country up worse then ever and getting paid a ridiculous wage without paying taxes to do so!!!
The defenders of The One need to quit while they are ahead (or just quit in order to not fall further behind). It just really looks bad when you defend this kind of crap. Plain and simple.
This kind of "journalism" bugs me because it leaves open the question of what is being done or not being done to prosecute or collect from the federal employees and officials who are tax cheats. If the Administration is showing favoritism to certain employees by stopping the IRS from enforcing the tax laws against high level officials, that would raise a very serious ethical question. In fact, I think it would warrant impeachment proceedings. However, the author does nothing to advance that issue or even look into it, because that wouldn't serve the author's purpose. The real purpose is to throw up a diversion in the tax policy debate. The goal is to convince people that because the Obama Administration has some tax cheats in it, he shouldn't be listened to on tax policy. He doesn't care that there could be a real ethical story here. The bottom line is that the GOP is never going to convince average Americans that higher income people should pay lower tax rates than they do. That's not class warfare. It's an injustice, and any half-way fair-minded person knows it. If the issue is successfully framed that way, they will lose. Of course they could render the entire issue moot if they would just support a flat tax like they used to.
In the countryside they equate this situation to "the fox guarding the hen house". It's a sick joke when you think about it.
