Even when Rep. Charles Rangel tries to explain how he got into his tax mess, he mangles the facts so much it’s easy to see how his accounts — and accountants — are muddled. And this from the lawmaker who has such a big say in determining who pays taxes and how much.
The chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee spent the past week reeling from a series of embarrassing revelations: He failed to report about $75,000 in rental income over two decades from a beach villa he owns in the Dominican Republic; he owes about $5,000 in back taxes to the government; he never knew he paid no interest on the villa’s mortgage for more than a decade.
Rangel’s basic defense is that he paid little or no attention to a building he bought, the mortgage he got to buy it or the rent it earned to pay the mortgage. Or the taxes due on someone else paying his mortgage. He claims to have no idea what the house is even worth.
Davis says that will change now that he has hired a second lawyer to monitor “all his tax and financial statements going forward and be sure they are meticulously correct.”
Republicans say Rangel had to have known exactly what he was doing.
“It is a sick irony that the top legislator on tax policy in the House is circumventing the very tax laws that he himself has authored,” said Ken Spain, spokesman for the GOP’s House campaign committee.
AP
9/13/8
Magnolia Tribune
