it is for the children

Maybe it is a byproduct of me getting older, and perhaps turning more into an adult (Ack! Ick! Poo!), but I find myself wondering, more and more, what kind of examples we are setting for our future generations.
Take, for example, the curious case of Tim Geithner. Back in 2001, Mr. Geithner left the United States Treasury to go work for the International Monetary Fund, an international organization that does not withhold United States taxes from its American employees. Instead, every quarter, the IMF sends out a form to all of its American employees, indicating that they must pay a self-employed payroll tax, and, every quarter, those employees must sign and return the form to the IMF. While this should go without saying, in this day and age, I feel I must make myself clear – signing and returning the form indicates that you have not only read the form in question, but also understand it. It was not a binding contract, forcing the American employees of the IMF to pay their self-employed payroll tax to the IRS, but it did indicate that those American employees knew they should.
Every quarter, Mr. Geithner signed the form in question, and every year (until 2004, when he left the IMF), Mr. Geithner did not pay the required self-employed payroll tax. In 2006, the IRS audited Mr. Geithner’s 2003 and 2004 tax returns, and concluded that he owed the federal government $17,230. I find it interesting that, based on this determination, the IRS did not audit more of Mr. Geithner’s books, but I do not know their standard operating proceedures, so this may have been entirely normal. However, as mentioned, Mr. Geithner did not pay his self-employed payroll tax for 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004… so what of the first two years?
Even after the audit, and after the IRS demanding its money back, Mr. Geithner still did not pay his self-employed payroll tax for 2001 or 2002. No, it took then-Senator Barack Hussein Obama’s transition team looking at his books for him to finally pay the remaining $25,970 he owed the federal government, on 21 November 2008 – over six years after when he was supposed to.
Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story. In 2001, 2004, and 2005, Mr. Geithner used his child’s time at overnight camps as a dependent-care tax deduction, when those types of camps are not eligible. Additional problems include “an early-withdrawal penalty from a retirement plan, an improper small-business deduction, a charitable-contribution deduction for ineligible items, and the expensing of utility costs that went for personal use”, all totalling to $4,334 in additional taxes and $1,232 in interest.
That is it, though, right? Not really. Mr. Geithner also happened to employ an illegal immigrant, whose work-authorization papers expired for a three-month period while she worked for him. Thankfully, at this point in time, this appears to be the end of the story.
The problem with this whole story, however, is that Mr. Geithner is currently being nominated to be the next Secretary of the Treasury, and thus directly responsible and accountable for the Internal Revenue Service.
In the grand scheme of the federal government, $48,766 is chump change, and hardly worth noticing – sure, that is just shy of the 2007 median annual household income of $50,233, but the reality is that the IRS brought in $1,366,241,000,000 of individual taxes alone in 2007. Mr. Geithner’s underpayment, when taken as a unitary whole, only accounted for 0.0000036% of the IRS’ collections – beyond statistically insignificant. And, in reality, I can certainly understand Mr. Geithner’s deduction errors… the United States Tax Code is gigantic, and growing daily, and sometimes one has to wonder if even the IRS knows what it all says.
The problem is not the numbers. The problem is the principles, or lack thereof.
Mr. Geithner signed a document, repeatedly, which indicated that he needed to do something else, repeatedly, and repeatedly failed to do so. Either Mr. Geithner did not actually read the document before signing it, which makes him an idiot, or he had no intention of actually following through on his taxes, which makes him a liar – in either case, his word was worthless. Then, once this duplicity partially came to light, Mr. Geithner did not do the right thing and pay the remainder of his backed taxes, instead opting to sweep the entire thing under the rug. Sure, he blames some accountant who told him he was good to go, but guess who is ultimately responsible and accountable for Mr. Geithner’s taxes?
From a certain perspective, Mr. Geithner seems like the perfect person to run the Treasury and the IRS – after all, he has been there, done that, and found out, first hand, just how painful, onerous, complicated, and trap-riddled our current tax code is, and maybe, just maybe, he could use that knowledge to try and improve on the situation. However, you and I both know that is nothing more than pie-in-the-sky wishing, and stands about as much chance of coming true as President Barack Hussein Obama turning into a staunch defender of the Second Amendment. And, sure, Mr. Geithner said he was very sorry, and I am all about forgiving those who are honestly contrite.
But I do not agree with rewarding a known liar with questionable integrity and a past of defrauding the government, and I definitely do not agree with putting a man in charge of the very organization he cheated. Timothy Geithner cannot be trusted, it is as simple as that.
Which brings me more-or-less full-circle back to where I started – what we are teaching our future successors is this: you can lie, you can cheat, you can mislead, and you can do all of those repeatedly and with the malice of forethought, and all you have to do is say you are sorry, and you are not only forgiven, but rewarded. It is bad enough that the generation immediately after mine will have the concept of “entitlement” firmly grafted into their psyches, but do we also want to completely remove the concept of “consequences” as well?
Hell, who am I kidding – we already have.
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