Geithner apologizes for not paying taxes

WASHINGTON (AP) - Treasury Secretary-designate Tim Geithner said Wednesday he was careless in failing to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes earlier this decade and apologized to Congress.

He told the Senate Finance Committee he was sorry that his past transgressions were now an issue in his confirmation at a time of deepening economic crisis. He urged Congress to act quickly and forcefully to deal with the crisis. A top administration priority is to foster economic recovery and “get credit flowing again,” Geithner testified.

As to his failure to pay the payroll taxes from 2001 to 2004 while he worked for the International Monetary Fund, Geithner said: “These were careless mistakes. They were avoidable mistakes.”

“But they were unintentional,” he said. “I should have been more careful.”

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Geithner apologizes for not paying taxes

Have any of you fine folks ever been in *tax trouble*?? Have you ever been audited by chance?

If you have, you know, fully well, the IRS is NOT kind. They are not even polite, not even remotely polite! The IRS will belittle you, they will talk to you as if you are already a convicted criminal, and somehow, I don’t think “But they (errors) were unintentional, I should have been more careful.” is going to be an accepted excuse!

As Secretary of the Treasury, Geithner will be the head of the IRS. Is a guy that failed to pay taxes and then made what the IRS would consider to be incredibly LAME excuses, the guy we want heading the Treasury??

Geithner told the panel that he had prepared some of the returns himself with a popular tax-preparation computer program.

Ya know, if I had thought of this, I wouldn’t have needed a CPA when I was still doing business. Sure, I’d have paid taxes and penalties at some point but what the hell, I’d get a nice free pass from Congress and the Senate. The almost certain to be approved tax cheat that’s about to become Secretary of the Treasury would be my friend and he’d keep the IRS at bay while I explained how that Turbo Tax thing just didn’t get the job done.

If we want this nation to EVER prosper again we MUST remove those from power that have been proven to have engaged in improprieties. Legal, business, moral, whatever those improprieties may be. Our current president has admitted that he did cocaine and smoked pot. Bush was an admitted drug user and alcoholic in his past. Clinton used drugs too, no matter how many times the lying SOB says he didn’t inhale, and then there’s still that Monica thing that taints the Clinton presidency.

A tax cheat is no different. We must have leaders that are above reproach. Having a tax cheat like Tim Geithner at the head of Treasury would be akin to allowing Keith Richards to become the head of the DEA!