Does this irritate anyone else besides me?  Today it was revealed that the Treasury Secretary appointee, Timothy Geithner, failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001 to 2004.

He claims that he didn’t think he needed to pay them because he was working for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is an international entity.  While this may be true (the IMF actually pays the taxes for the employee), the IRS considers that the employee is actually self employed and must pay their own portion of social security and medicare taxes.

And this guy is going to run the treasury?

It seems to me that if the guy doesn’t know what taxes he’s legally required to pay (even years after the IRS actually sent him a bill), does he really have any business running the treasury of the United States of America?

What’s even further aggravating is that Democrats say we should look past this little problem due to the extreme challenges Geithner faces in his new position.

So effectively, the rules don’t really apply to those who hold a really, really, demanding position with extreme challenges.

If a schmuck like me owed that much to the IRS, I’d be in jail.

Is it really so difficult to find people in our government who have ignored or bent the rules for their own personal political or financial gain?

Maybe so.

The fact that these issues are downplayed is all the more irritating, considering these people aren’t even in office yet.

Finance, Politics IRS, penalties, Taxes, Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary