gbudavid

Fta We are getting a good look at how "they", the cheapskate racist Liberal scoundrels live and how "we" Conservatives, and the heart of America live. Obama for all his talk about being charitable gave essentially nothing to charity, after earning close to $4M of the past few years.

The fact is that the Liberals have always played by different rules. But under Obama, they can actually get away with it…clean. And we all know from Biden that Obama is clean..

Janinco

...and articulate. :-)

RE: Your point about an average Joe owing back taxes - a great recent example is Joe the Plumber.

Remember how eager the press was to chime in about how he owed $1200 in back taxes? Just a fraction of what Tom owed, or Geithner owed for that matter. And he never called it a mistake or an accident.

I guess the rules are different if you are friendly with "The Man".

Great comment, Dean! I forgot about Joe the Plumber!

It's just insane. Isn't Daschle one of those who wants OUR taxes raised?!
I would mark this post as funny but it's just too sad :(
Can you imagine if you or I did this? We'd be in JAIL!

LisainDallas

OOOHHHH this just makes me so mad I could scream. And what makes me even madder is no one, well Hardly anyone seems upset about it! What in the world is wrong with people. I am amazed and dismayed.

"I'm no clothing designer, but I'm thinking 'stripes'?"

The set up and that line made me laugh out loud.
I too was bemused to find that Daschele could claim anything in taxes at all, he probably found away to claim a buddies charity, like liberals finding a buddy to pee in a cup when they have to take a drug test.

Kevin, I worked for a tax preparer for 13 years and, assuming no tax shelters, the MINIMUM he earned to owe that much taxes is in the range of 530'sK. That just the minimum. That's assuming no deductions at all and we know that's not the case because he made those charity claims. I don't know about you, but I suspecious when a liberal uses the word charity. Usually means they're paying it with somebody else's money.

What's truely aweful is now we have a tax cheat heading the treasury department and thus the IRS. A tax cheat running the IRS. Why doesn't he just appoint Bin Laden head of Homeland Security? At least that way he would be honest about his intentions. He said his adminstration would be the most transparent in history and so far he's kept it. It's so tranparently corrupt and rotten that's there's no missing it unless you're wearing blinders.

And to be shocked about the bonuses on Wall Street. That would had been more convincing if he didn't have that lobbyist he hired (two days after he said he wouldn't hire lobbyists) from Bern Sterns who got 50K of that bonus sitting next to him. Tranparently hypocritical.

OJ for Treasury !!!!

I too remember looking at The Big O's (and I don't mean orgasm) financial statement during the campaign and noted that he earned about $1.4M in one year yet gave about $4000 to charity. Biden was worst. If Big "O" were to be a practicing Christian then his tithes should have been $140K for the year to Jeremiah's church but this is not the case.

Thieves in the temple. Ready to tell all of us how much we need to pay and that we are not paying enough.

Sadly transparent!

RonB

Working backwards here since, I was indisposed. @Ron, you are deep my brotha, and I am glad that you follow my blog. Let's get in touch soon.

Madmath1 - Bin Laden for Homeland Security, well now that's the kind of satire worthy of this site! Excellent!

Digital - I must say that in writing that quip, I indeed laughed at my dang self. Thanks for the visit!

Julie - Don't get mad, get even. We have 2 years, and they will give us lots of ammo, taxed of course!

Zubata

I first heard about Daschle and his "oversights" this morning. No wonder these freakin Democrats want to increase taxes. They cheat on theirs so whats the big deal?

thoughtsonthis

Can anyone tell me if there is an honest Democrat in Congress.

Jamdr

The new administration is beginning to smell like rotting garbage. How many people are going to fill high positions that are receiving pay to play. Blago is going to look like a rookie by the time this administration is filled with 2 new tax cheaters and now we find out Daschle has taken over $250,000 from an organization that supports the National Health Care system, of which Daschle is going to be presiding over. His words, I didn't know if I should report it or not...oh yeah.....Doesn't it seem convenient that the taxes got paid only after he got the nomination?

PhoenixTx

Good Stuff!

Would you like to tell us who brought Daschle's cheating to light? Remind us. Was it an IRS audit? Was it the painstaking work of an army of dedicated bloggers?

No.

The improper deductions were found by the Obama-Biden Transition Team.

The $88K unreported income was discovered by Daschle's own accountant (who originally thought that a month of his consulting fees had been paid in the previous year).

The car? Daschle brought it to light himself last June.

There are two ways to interpret all this. One is that Daschle's mistakes were no such thing, that he intended to hide income from the IRS, and decided that the back taxes were worth it to smooth his way into the new administration job.

The other way is to imagine that, given the prospect of a new job, and the need to be clean for it, Daschle simply took a second look. As you Republicans so often complain, taxes are extremely complicated beasts, and it's easy to screw up even when you're trying to be completely open and honest.

I don't see any reason to assume that Daschle was being intentionally dishonest, or even incompetent. I guarantee that if Democrats were making a big deal about similarly accusations towards a Republican politician, you'd find every reason to offer him the benefit of the doubt. You might ask us if somebody earning a million dollars a year would want to jeopardize all that by breaking the law, for a mere $100K spread out over three years.

You certainly wouldn't jump to the conclusion that all Republicans are tax cheats. More likely you would think that anyone making such accusations was just trying to tear down Republicans.

You're trying to destroy Daschle before he can bring us universal health insurance. Have the intellectual cajones to admit it.

A couple more points:

You claim that nobody "forgets" to report $500K in income.* Then you pretend to worry that you might need to report to the IRS every time you borrow your neighbor's pickup.

Aren't you implicitly admitting that the car service (which made up approximately $200K of Daschle's unreported income) is the sort of thing that an honest person might not think of as reportable income?

Toss in $88K that he may have already believed he'd paid takes on, and the $150K that you simply pulled out of thin air -- it only takes $350K of taxable income to generate $120K in taxes* -- and what's left could be described as a rounding error.


* You? Stack the deck to support the conclusion you want to reach? No blogger would stoop so low.

Bryce - I love it when idiots comments, as you are fodder for my wit. $350K is not what it takes to be taxed $128K. What you did was calculate 35% of X in order to get to $128K ($120) in your example. What you FORGOT to do was to add in the actual tax itself, or add $128K to the original amount earned, then deduct it, since the gov't, thankfully, doesn't "tax the tax".

You should also deduct SSN/Medicare, and a host of other deductions, but no need to embarrass you further.

As for my sarcasm of deducting a trip to home depot on a borrowed truck, do I really need to explain that? OK, I will then.

It was a joke! As for Daschle, the limo service he was using was being PAID for by the company in which he worked, which made it income. He knew this, and he said that he "suspected it was" in 2008.

This is Liberals screwing the system, and you are a Liberal willing to condone it.

I'm not mad at you. Think as you wish. But just know that you are an idiot, and be happy with that.

I like you blog post. Dirk sent me here.
Mr. Steele always impressed me on TV with his wit and smarts/ conservative comments.
Would you consider emailing your future posts to me?

tschuckman@aol.com

Thanks,
Tom S
Disabled Vietnam Veteran: 68-70.

Tom, you can go to one of the feeds, [little orange buttons] on the left side of the blog, and you will automatically be updated when I post. Let me know if you have any difficulties, and I can walk you through it. And thank Dirk for me!

I am now suggesting to everyone that on the back of your tax forms fill in the names of your elected officials. In fact, I think it should be a requirement upon nomination that taxes be paid in full and a full IRS audit be held. If found delinquent they should be barred from public office for a period.

Jonathan - I like the idea of officials being barred if there are any irregularities. It will make them take a good hard look at tax code.

I disagree with me filling in any more information on taxes, as there is enough information to fill in already!

4Christ

I'm sick of hearing that word--> change. Seems like every other thing I hear about on television or whatever has that keyword attached to it. And I'm wondering...just how MUCH kool-aid have they drank?

@4christ - Everybody will be tired of "change" soon! It will be a dirty word in four years...actually less. But when all you have are "concepts and cliches", you have to use them.

YUEAYLP

I heard of a guy that would charge 5 bucks to tell people how to pay no taxes. You would send him a 5 bucks and he would mail you back with a note that says "Make No Money"

SQLserver

Ah, classic Republican thinking.
1. A Democrat paid his taxes a little late.
2. All democrats are evil and corrupt.

LOL, you people are getting more desperate every day. And you wonder why you lost the last election, and are on track to loose in 2010.

@SQL - "a little late", yeah like when he received his nomination. Sure.

All Democrats evil and corrupt, no. Just most!

Let's see who is desperate in 2010. Here's something to consider. It really can't get much worse for us, but it can for you.