When those who maunder maudlin over the troubles in our society and beg for more government for their relief don’t pay or avoid paying their own taxes, it’s utterly repugnant.
Not paying taxes. I must admit, I first thought it was a clever trick, like the old coin trick. Where you show the audience a coin, roll it over your splayed out fingers and tuck back into your palm and voila, it vanishes. It disappears as if it was called into the magical purple hued beyond, out of sight. Apparently that’s what many politicians use when it comes to paying taxes, little tricks and illusions. What makes it more wretched is when it comes from the same politicians whose “solutions” begin and end with the skeletal fingertips of its IRS slipping into your wallet and stripping it of more bills.
There are a lot of finger references so far in these few paragraphs, so I’ll use a two more: one to point the index finger at Ed Markey for appearing as if he’s joined the long list of pol tax dodgers and the other also aimed in his direction. This one is adjacent to the index and stands upright alone while the others fold under at the knuckle.
The other day it came out that, Massachusetts Rep. and Senate candidate Ed Markey-D decided…
“… to redact his address from the tax returns his campaign showed reporters, which Markey claimed was an accountant’s error.
That’s weird, why redact an address? Well, he is running for Senate in MA not MD and …
“It appears from a review of news accounts and Maryland law that Rep. Markey may in fact be a resident of Maryland for tax purposes and, thus, may owe Maryland taxes and should file a Maryland state tax return,” wrote America Rising PAC executive director Tim Miller in a letter to the comptroller of Maryland dated from Tuesday.
“Rep. Markey and his wife purchased their home in Chevy Chase in 1991. Their home is 3,412 square feet and is currently assessed for tax purposes at $1.3 million. According to Montgomery County property tax records, Rep. Markey listed his Chevy Chase home as his principal residence through 2001, but stopped listing his home as his personal residence after he purchased his parents’ house in Malden, MA,” Miller wrote.
“The 2001 purchase of his parents’ house following his father’s death was the first time Rep. Markey owned property in his congressional district. Rep. Markey bought the house for $150,000,” Miller wrote. ”The house is currently valued at $204,800, and Rep. Markey doesn’t take advantage of a tax break for homes that are owner-occupied.”
I wonder why he stopped listing his MD residence as his principal residence in 2001. Could it be that he would prefer to pay taxes on a couple hundred grand versus a million three even though he spends more of his time at the location where he would be paying taxes on a million three? Yeah, me too.
Okay to be fair, he may still be a MA resident and just live closer to his work; that’s precisely what Markey’s campaign is trying to sell.
“Rep. Markey’s Senate campaign spokeswoman produced for a news reporter an exact number of trips — 34 — that Markey took back to his congressional district in 2012,” Miller wrote. ”If we were to assume that Rep. Markey spent five days out of Maryland on each of those 34 trips, there would remain 195 days in 2012 when Markey could have been residing in Maryland. … According to Maryland law, one definition for a resident of Maryland is an individual maintaining aplace of abode in the state for 183 days during a taxable year. …Even if an individual is not a Maryland domiciliary, they must file a Maryland tax return if they spend in the aggregate 183 days in Maryland.
… Markey is apparently active in his Maryland community, and that his wife owns a business in Chevy Chase. It has also been reported that Markey pays the monthly minimum for water service at his Massachusetts residence.
(Emphasis mine.)
Would you open a business in a state a few hundred miles from where you were a resident? Me neither. Do you think that he lives in MD more than MA? Me, too. Given all of this it sure looks like he’s a resident of MD for tax purposes. Taxes he hasn’t paid.
But hey, he’s not alone. He’s simply another loathsome “compassionate” hypocrite that let’s others pay for their “solutions”. The list is quite long, here’s just a sampling of the cunning cavalcade. There’s Mr. ready-to-trade-up-to-marry-the-more-wealthy Heinz Kerry who didn’t want to pay the MA dock taxes, so he docked his yacht it in R.I. where the taxes are less; and remember how Majority Leader Tom Daschle -D somehow overlooked paying taxes on $100,000; oh and Treasury Secretary Timmy the-weasel Geihtner also somehow didn’t pay all that he was supposed to, only to do so, when he was nominated for the Secretary position. Just a coincidence, I suspect. Sure he would have paid it otherwise right? And who could forget Rep. Charles Rangal NY- D not paying any taxes on an entire property; who, at the time, was the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, you know the committee that is responsible for most of the tax-writing. How odd, probably just another oversight. And the list goes on…
So, it’s not a trick at all to not pay taxes. You just need to be a part of the right club– a Democrat. And take their approach to all inconveniences and apply it to taxes: “let someone else do it”.
Great gig, if you can get it … and live with yourself
