What is the difference between a "tax accident" and a "tax cheat"?

Last year I received a letter from the IRS.  In June of 2007, I broke my leg.  It was your run of the mill break and I spent five months in a wheelchair.  I wasn't able to live in my own home and my expenses shot up overnight.  I had a small stock fund that I cashed in to help shore up my finances.  According to the IRS, I underpaid my taxes on that fund by $213 and with interest and penalties I owed $269.  I mailed them a check.  But I steamed about it.  Am I a tax cheat?  Is Glenn Beck?  Politico:

What if it's Beck with a tax 'accident'?

No one has been less forgiving than Glenn Beck when it comes to Democrats with tax problems. Not just the well-known ones like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner but also less serious ones such as Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, whose husband only recently paid off $6,400 in tax liens on his auto repair business, and Nancy Killefer, who withdrew her nomination to be White House chief performance officer, citing a $946.69 tax lien on her Washington home.

Their tax issues are just one indicator of “a culture of corruption among some of the left,” Beck declared just last month in a segment on his hugely popular Fox News television show, in which he branded Geithner, Killefer, Solis and a handful of other Obama nominees “tax cheats,” whom he wouldn’t trust “with my children, let alone my children's future.”

Mocking the excuses offered by the nominees, Beck sarcastically intoned: “Oh, the tax thing, it was an accident. It was my husband's fault. I didn't do it, he did it. I didn't mean to do it. I was just working hard for the people.”

So what to make, then, of the fact that Beck has had his own minor tax problems over the past few years?

Well, here's what I make of it.  If you scroll to the second page of the Politico article you'll find that upon being notified by the IRS that monies were owed, Beck, or more accurately, Beck's company paid the taxes.  The shortages were due to the differences between tax codes in different states and Beck's company had moved to a different state mid tax year.  I understand that a mistake could happen and I appreciate that once the mistake was discovered it was immediately rectified.

Geither, Daschle and company didn't make a mistake.  They cheated and they didn't pay up until it affected their political careers.  It is a cheap shot for Politico to lump Beck, and myself, in the same category as people who take citizen's money to pay for their socialist programs but fail to put out their own money until it is convenient.  They didn't have accidents, they cheated and they are hypocrites to boot.

In fairness to Politico, it is pointed out in the article that our tax code is far too complicated.  Maybe Timothy Geithner will fix that.  Yeah, right.

Birds Of A Feather, Part Two

Via Memeorandum

Yesterday I wrote about President Obama’s long standing affection for surrounding himself with shady characters. It appears there is a new entry in the rogue’s gallery of Obama’s long standing friends: Henry Louise “Skip” Gates, Jr. Dan Riehl:

A Gatesgate At Henry Gates' "Bogus" Charity?

Henry Louis Gates, Jr controls a tax-exempt, non-profit charity, Inkwell Foundation, Inc, that managed to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct support in one year, yet only gave out $27,500 in grants, the bulk of which went to Gates' employees and Harvard colleagues. Also, as recently as September 2008, the Boston Globe reported that Gates' charity was not in compliance with the law for failing to register the proper paperwork, despite the charity existing since 2005. The charge at the time was that it was "bogus," as you'll see below. In fact, the state Attorney General's office told the Globe the charity was likely either inactive, or dissolved. Yet, documents below show the charity is healthy, wealthy and active.

Is it possible that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was acting strange when law enforcement showed up at his door because he didn't want the story below to come out? It may take a tax lawyer to answer that question, but based on this research, it can't be ruled out. We know the press has questioned Gates about the charity in the past and gotten no response.

Hmm, a tax-exempt, non-profit charity setup for the sole financial benefit of the man who controls it? Is that legal?

The last thing I would do is have a beer with a man who called me a racist or with someone who said I had behaved stupidly. In fact, I would be insulted by the mere suggestion which smacks of a man giving his wife flowers thinking it makes up for his spending the afternoon in a hotel room with a hooker. Sgt. Crowley as every right to tell Obama to stick his invite where the sun don’t shine. Barring that, Crowley could use the opportunity to ask the President why, as someone who favors using taxation to re-distribute wealth, he surrounds himself with tax cheats.

Others blogging this story:
The Other McCain
No Sheeples Here
Big Hollywood
Pajamas Media
The Corner
The Daley Gator