Thursday, January 26, 2012

36 of Obama's staff owe $833,970 in back taxes.

"You folks have got to start paying your taxes. It really looks bad"
Washington DC, Jan 26, 2012. President Barack Hussein Obama, D-Kenya constantly tells us that "the rich must pay their fair share" as he beats the drum for higher and higher income tax rates. He wages class warfare, implying that the rich aren't paying enough.

But if he took a close look around him he would discover that at least 36 members of President Obama’s executive staff owe back taxes to the federal government, Investor’s Business Daily reported on Thursday.

The Internal Revenue Service revealed that the three dozen Obama staffers owe a total of $833,970 in back taxes from 2010.

Nearly one third of Obama’s aides make more than $100,000. Twenty-one of them are paid $172,200 per year, the top White House salary. In total, Obama’s staff of 457 aides made more than $37 million last year.
“It’s ironic, the same week that President Obama says that people who paid their full obligation should pay more, it’s ironic that people who work for President Obama haven’t even paid their own taxes.”  Ryan Ellis, tax policy director of Americans for Tax Reform, told The Daily Caller.
The IRS report also said that thousands of federal employees owe a shocking total of more than $3.4 billion in back taxes. Many of those who are delinquent on their tax obligations include employees of the U.S. Senate who worked on tax-offender laws enacted by Congress.
“The people who wanted to raise taxes to expand the size of government at the same time aren’t paying their full part,” Ellis said.
The IRS will attempt to negotiate back-tax payment plans with those who owe. None of the federal employees will be let go: According to federal law, only IRS workers can be fired for not paying.

Departments with employees who owe the IRS include both branches of Congress, the Department of Education, the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice and the Postal Service.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.

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.

At the SOTU address Obama said we need to pay more taxes
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.

No comments:

Post a Comment