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Next tax cheat up for appointment: Tom Daschle

post #1 of 62
1/30/09 at 5:36pm
Thread Starter 
This is freaking pathetic.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpu...in-the-ro.html

ABC News has learned that the nomination of former Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., to be President Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services has hit a traffic snarl on its way through the Senate Finance Committee.

The controversy deals with a car and driver lent to Daschle by a wealthy Democratic friend, a chauffeur service the former senator used for years without declaring it on his taxes

The Cadillac and driver were never part of Daschle's official compensation package at InterMedia but Mr. Daschle -- who as Senate majority leader enjoyed the use of a car and driver at taxpayer expense -- didn't declare their services on his income taxes, as tax laws require.

During the vetting process to become HHS secretary, Daschle corrected the tax violation, voluntarily paying $101,943 in back taxes plus interest, working with his accountant to amend his tax returns for 2005 through 2007.

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post #2 of 62
1/30/09 at 6:08pm
Good grief, what is it with all these tax cheats he is appointing?
Can he find no one that doesn't have lobbyist ties and who doesn't cheat on their taxes?
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post #3 of 62
1/31/09 at 8:40am
Thread Starter 
Daschle can't even claim confusion about this, like Geithner did.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpu...aschle-ta.html

Mr. Daschle also didn't report $83,333 in consulting income in 2007.

The Senate Finance Committee Report also notes that during the vetting process, President Obama's Transition Team "identified certain donations that did not qualify as charitable deductions because they were not paid to qualifying organizations. Daschle adjusted his contribution deductions on his amended returns for 2005, 2006 and 2007 to remove these amounts and add additional contributions." This adjustment meant a reduction in the amount he contributed to charitable foundations of $14,963 from 2005 through 2007.

With the unreported income from the use of a car service in the amounts of $73,031 in 2005, $89,129 in 2006 and $93,096 in 2007; the unreported consulting income of $83,333 in 2007; and the adjusted reductions in charitable contributions, Daschle adds a total of $353,552 in additional income and reduced donations, meaning an additional tax payment of $128,203, in addition to $11,964 in interest.

On January 2 of this year, Daschle filed amended tax returns to pay the $140,167 in unpaid taxes.

The Finance Committee staff still is reviewing whether travel and entertainment services provided Tom and Linda Daschle by EduCap, Inc., Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation, Academy Achievement, and Loan to Learn should be reported as income. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Daschle made use of the jet belonging to EduCap, a non-profit student loan organization.



Good grief. How do you forget $83k in income? I'm sure its his tax accountants fault.
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post #4 of 62
1/31/09 at 9:21am
I think it is extremely pathetic that because these guys are being chosen by, "The One", it is quite permissible, but if it was the Pubs doing something like this the out cry would be heard round the world.

Tell me, please, someone tell me, where, oh where is the "change?"

All who voted for Barack have been hoodwinked IMO. But what is sad is most do not even care, yet.
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post #5 of 62
1/31/09 at 9:25am
Quote:
Originally Posted by neetanddave View Post
Good grief. How do you forget $83k in income? I'm sure its his tax accountants fault.
Worse than that, how do you overlook $350,000 in extra income, which is the actual amount? How do you even use $90,000 worth of chauffeur service in a year?
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post #6 of 62
1/31/09 at 10:31am
Thread Starter 
BTW, he has lobbyist troubles too.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/18237.html

Daschle made nearly $5.3 million in the last two years, records released Friday show, including $220,000 he received for giving speeches, many of them to outfits that stand to gain or lose millions of dollars from the work he would do once confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services.

For instance, the Health Industry Distributors Association plunked down $14,000 to land the former Senate Democratic leader in March 2008. The association, which represents medical products distributors, boasts on its website that Daschle met with it after he was nominated to discuss “the impact an Obama administration will have on the industry.”

This week, the group began openly lobbying him, sending him a letter urging him to rescind a rule requiring competitive bidding of Medicare contracts.


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post #7 of 62
1/31/09 at 10:41am
Thread Starter 
Awww, his wife's a big time lobbyist too. It must run in the family. How special.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=27744 (sorry, it was the quickest link I found, but note this was written in 2002! It's been going on how long????)

Linda Hall Daschle, wife of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has lobbied since 1997 for some of the U.S. government's largest contractors.

According to federal lobbying records, Mrs. Daschle represents Boeing and United Technologies on Capitol Hill, even as these interests depend on her husband's official acts in the Senate for their federal contracts.

The income Mrs. Daschle ultimately derives from her clients also enters the Daschle family budget, improving Sen. Daschle's finances as he considers actions that will affect these clients. The exact amount Mrs. Daschle earns from her lobbying activities remains unknown, since the senator told Human Events he will not make their joint tax return public.

Mrs. Daschle, a former top Federal Aviation Administration official, has lobbied for Loral Space Technologies, which was awarded a nearly $1 billion FAA contract when she served as FAA deputy administrator.


Nice. He became a millionaire from her lobbying efforts, while they skirt the law by saying she only lobbied the House and not the Senate? This is nuts.
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post #8 of 62
1/31/09 at 2:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ckblv View Post
Good grief, what is it with all these tax cheats he is appointing?
Can he find no one that doesn't have lobbyist ties and who doesn't cheat on their taxes?

It would be laughable already if it wasn't so shameful.

Y'all keep hoping for that change, though...
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post #9 of 62
1/31/09 at 3:31pm
Its the goverment! All thats there are the tax cheats that have been caught, and the tax cheats that havent
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post #10 of 62
2/1/09 at 9:46am
All of us, no matter what political affiliation we have, should be disgusted and angry with Obama's latest appointments to his cabinet. Neither Obama nor his tax cheat appointees seem to have the slightest sense of shame. And too many of us shrug our shoulders and chalk it up to "business as usual" in Washington. Yet, if any of us had done what Geithner and Daschle did, we'd be in jail right now, courtesy of the IRS. The same IRS which would have charged all of us stiff penalties for our transgressions but waived them for Geithner, which is unheard of.

Congressman John Carter (R-Texas) recognizes this blatant and outrageous double standard for government officials and US citizens when it comes to tax evasion and outright cheating. I love his Rangel Rule, which unfortunately won't ever become law, but at least this congressman gets it!!!

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009...-irs-late-fees

(Guess he's going to have to rename it the Rangel-Geithner-Daschle Rule now...)
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post #11 of 62
2/1/09 at 10:44am
Thread Starter 


There are many things to be proud of in our Country, this isn't one of them. I'll be interested to see if Daschle escapes as easily as Geithner did.
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post #12 of 62
2/1/09 at 11:44am
Quote:
Originally Posted by neetanddave View Post
I'll be interested to see if Daschle escapes as easily as Geithner did.
I really doubt he will, given the amount in question and his wife's connections.
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post #13 of 62
2/1/09 at 2:43pm
God forbid if Bush would have done this, the media would have been all over it like flies on you know what
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post #14 of 62
2/1/09 at 2:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ckblv View Post
All who voted for Barack have been hoodwinked IMO. But what is sad is most do not even care, yet.
What....their savior and knight in shinning armor hoodwink them?? I have to agree
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post #15 of 62
2/1/09 at 3:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by AmberThe Bobcat View Post
God forbid if Bush would have done this, the media would have been all over it like flies on you know what
Every news portal I go too has this story headlined under Top Stories AND Most popular Stories. I dont see how much more all over it you can get
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post #16 of 62
2/1/09 at 3:34pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Caleeko View Post
Every news portal I go too has this story headlined under Top Stories AND Most popular Stories. I dont see how much more all over it you can get
I find that hard to believe, since even the conservative sites I spend time on aren't highlighting it.

I don't see it headlined on Yahoo, or MSN.

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post #17 of 62
2/1/09 at 3:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by neetanddave View Post
I find that hard to believe, since even the conservative sites I spend time on aren't highlighting it.

I don't see it headlined on Yahoo, or MSN.
Im looking right at it on Yahoo right now. Maybe if you stop filtering out all the good news...
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post #18 of 62
2/1/09 at 6:13pm
Both of these "tax cheat" situations are ones where the Obama team's vetting group looked at old taxes, found something wrong, and told the nominee to fix it. If anything about this situation is a little concerning, it's how much time and trouble Obama's staffs take at nominee vetting.

I wasn't upset by any of George W. Bush's nominees, and I have yet to be upset by any of Obama's nominees. All of the nominees are human beings, with flaws and errors in their history, and I fail to see why I should be shocked at any of it.
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post #19 of 62
2/1/09 at 6:16pm
You know what gets me the most - is all these people all of a sudden remember they should have paid taxes years ago; and now get a "conscience" because they are about to be appointed to a high position in Obama's cabinet.

Makes you REALLY wonder......I'm glad I did NOT vote for Obama. The general public wanted "change" - well we will get it; just not the kind of change that you expected!

Makes you wonder how may more years would have gone by without paying taxes if these guys had not been caught now??????
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post #20 of 62
2/1/09 at 6:20pm
It makes me wonder how many politicians of every stripe and party is doing exactly the same thing and getting away with it, because they haven't been nominated for any appointments yet?
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post #21 of 62
2/1/09 at 6:25pm
You got that right Skippy, now I am wondering how many elected officials do pay their taxes.
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post #22 of 62
2/1/09 at 6:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by KTLynn View Post
Yet, if any of us had done what Geithner and Daschle did, we'd be in jail right now, courtesy of the IRS. The same IRS which would have charged all of us stiff penalties for our transgressions but waived them for Geithner, which is unheard of.
The IRS didn't figure out that Geithner and Daschle didn't pay enough taxes, and the IRS misses simliar errors in many, many tax returns of completely normal people.



from http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/obje...3/287/290/ART/
Quote:
In a recent year, however, only 2,472 Americans were convicted of tax crimes -- .0022% of all taxpayers. This number is astonishingly small, taking into account that the IRS estimates that 17% of all taxpayers are not complying with the tax laws in some way or another.



According to this webpage http://innovation.cq.com/projects/cabinet_nominee Obama has announced 17 nominees that need Senate confirmation. 2/17 = 12% of Obama's nominees have (so far) been shown to be not complying with tax laws in some way or another ... that's less than the 17% estimated for American taxpayers as a whole.



To call this a group of tax cheats is factually incorrect.
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post #23 of 62
2/2/09 at 4:28am
The IRS has never missed an error I ever made and I'm just a little person trying to pay them. The IRS is non forgiving to people like me and they hound you till they get every last dime they think you owe! I will never forget when they notified me that I owed taxes from 1992 in 2003. I paid my taxes every year in between those years and they never told me about 1992. Anyway it turned into a 2,000 bill I owed(With penalties and interest). I was barely making it that year after a messy divorce. I really dislike the IRS.
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post #24 of 62
2/2/09 at 5:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Enuja View Post
The IRS didn't figure out that Geithner and Daschle didn't pay enough taxes, and the IRS misses simliar errors in many, many tax returns of completely normal people.
Actually, the IRS DID catch Geithner. He was audited, and had to pay back taxes for 3 years. They DIDN'T catch his previous years, since they are only allowed to go back 3 years in that kind of an audit. When it became an issue, he paid back the rest that he owed.

I can't find anything to say if the IRS caught Daschle.
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post #25 of 62
2/2/09 at 8:14am
Tom Daschle is "sorry", yeah he's sorry he got caught.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090202/.../daschle_taxes
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post #26 of 62
2/2/09 at 9:02am
Now if we could just get an apology from all the political and ex-political figures that actually have something to be sorry about

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post #27 of 62
2/2/09 at 9:48am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skippymjp View Post
It makes me wonder how many politicians of every stripe and party is doing exactly the same thing and getting away with it, because they haven't been nominated for any appointments yet?
Glenn Beck said someone should investigate every current government employee NOW!
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post #28 of 62
2/2/09 at 9:59am
What do ex-politicians do with themselves? In Daschle’s Tax Woes, a Peek Into Washington
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post #29 of 62
2/2/09 at 12:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skippymjp View Post
It makes me wonder how many politicians of every stripe and party is doing exactly the same thing and getting away with it, because they haven't been nominated for any appointments yet?
Well, we are getting the change that we voted for - the presidential transition teams are uncovering all kinds of dirt on the nominees. A refreshing change - regardless of political affiliations, the Obama team WILL "hang the laundry out to air"
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post #30 of 62
2/2/09 at 1:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ckblv View Post
I think it is extremely pathetic that because these guys are being chosen by, "The One", it is quite permissible, but if it was the Pubs doing something like this the out cry would be heard round the world.

Tell me, please, someone tell me, where, oh where is the "change?"

All who voted for Barack have been hoodwinked IMO. But what is sad is most do not even care, yet.
Actually, there wasn't much ballyhoo about other tax cheats - such as ultra-rich Republicans AND the small businessmen (and having worked for small businessess, I've seen that they do do their own share of cheating, although the numbers involved are miniscule compared to those of the rich):
just a few links for consideration, from years past:
http://www.alternet.org/story/50645/
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061023/fager
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB...lenews_barrons
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