In their defense of Treasury Secretary–designate Timothy Geithner, members of the Obama transition team have said that his failure to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes during a 2001–03 stint at the International Monetary Fund was a “common mistake,” and, in addition, that Geithner received the approval of two accountants for his erroneous tax returns. Now, new details are emerging that cast doubt on both of those arguments.
“He made a common mistake,” incoming White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said of Geithner this week. Obama officials also cited an Internal Revenue Service publication that said “as many as half” of the employees of international organizations make mistakes on their tax returns. But that figure appears to be a significant exaggeration of the specific situation at the International Monetary Fund, where Geithner worked. “There’s not a high incidence of non-payment of taxes,” Bill Murray, an IMF spokesman, told me Thursday. “We have a very low incidence of that here.” Finally, staffers for the Senate Finance Committee interviewed an official at the IMF as part of their Geithner research and were told that problems such as Geithner’s occurred perhaps once a year. Given all that, it’s probably more accurate to say that Geithner-like mistakes by high-ranking IMF officials are not only not common, but seem to be quite rare. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmY2ODY3MzkxZTViMGFkNDA3YjY3YzZlYTQ1ODEyNDU= --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
