Treasury nominee Geithner faces scrutiny over taxes, housekeeper
By DAVID LIGHTMAN AND KEVIN G. HALL
President-elect Barack Obama's pick to head the Treasury Department met behind closed doors with a Senate panel late Tuesday in a bid to save his nomination amid revelations that he had underpaid taxes and briefly employed a foreign-born housekeeper whose immigration papers had expired...
Geithner met privately with members of the Senate Finance Committee to explain why he had underpaid federal taxes from 2001 to 2004, mostly a period in which he worked as an employee of the International Monetary Fund. Once he was made aware of the underreporting error, he paid the Internal Revenue Service more than $32,000 in back taxes and more than $8,000 in interest.
The Treasury-designee also explained that he was unaware at the time that he kept a housekeeper on his family payroll for three months in 2005 after her immigration documents had expired. That employee, he said, has since married a U.S. citizen and now holds a green card...
A bipartisan document released by the Senate Finance Committee showed that on Geithner's tax returns in 2001, 2004 and 2005, he claimed a dependent child-care tax credit for time that his children spent at overnight camps. When an accountant apprised him in 2006 that the credit is for things such as after-school care, not overnight camps, Geithner failed at the time to amend his past returns.
The document said the most significant tax concern was Geithner's failure to pay Social Security taxes during his time at the IMF from 2001 to 2003. He sent the IRS and the state of Maryland estimated tax payments that corresponded with federal and state tax allowances, but he didn't write checks for the corresponding self-employment tax allowance, even though he signed an annual tax-allowance request from the IMF.
If he becomes treasury secretary, Geithner will be in charge of the IRS, which makes these tax problems potentially combustible...
"This is highly unusual. Normally it's a partisan investigation that topples nominees," said the aide, adding that some Republican senators say that "if it was anyone else, for sure, they wouldn't survive. A lot of people have done a lot less and lost."
not good!
