Tax Lawyer's Blog

Conservative talk show host and political muckraker Glenn Beck has minor tax problems and, therefore, should shutup when Obama administration appointees charged with upholding federal laws violate the tax laws.

This, folks, is the tortured reasoning of Politico’s Kenneth Vogel:

Paul Caron has the story:

Politico reports that Glenn Beck, who has been on the front lines in criticizing various “tax cheats” nominated for, and serving in, the Obama administration (e.g., Lael Brainard, Greg Craig, Tom Daschle, Tim Geithner, Nancy Killefer, Ron Kirk, Capricia Penavic Marshall, Kathleen Sebelius, Hilda Solis, Sonia Sotomayor), has his own tax “accident”:

Their tax issues are just one indicator of “a culture of corruption among some of the left,” Beck declared just last month in a segment on his hugely popular Fox News television show, in which he branded Geithner, Killefer, Solis and a handful of other Obama nominees “tax cheats,” whom he wouldn’t trust “with my children, let alone my children’s future.” 

Mocking the excuses offered by the nominees, Beck sarcastically intoned: “Oh, the tax thing, it was an accident. It was my husband’s fault. I didn’t do it, he did it. I didn’t mean to do it. I was just working hard for the people.” 

So what to make, then, of the fact that Beck has had his own minor tax problems over the past few years?

As Beck evolved from a medium-market local radio personality to a one-man media empire with top-rated radio and television shows, best-selling books, a monthly magazine and a traveling one-man comedy tour, his production company, Mercury Radio Arts, has at times struggled to keep up with the heightened tax and filing demands accompanying his success.

If you live and work long enough, you will at some point have a minor tax problem (i.e. a late filed return, a past due estimated payment, a payment lost in the mail, an unintentional mistake on your tax return). These things do happen. But the obvious difference (obvious to everyone but Mr. Vogel, that is) between Beck and the individuals he has criticized is that Beck neither holds nor seeks a position of public trust.

I don’t know Ken Vogel. He may be the nicest guy since Jim Valvano. But I’m afraid he’s out to lunch on this one.

I am no fan of Mr. Beck, but it is no more hypocritical for him to demand that the U.S. Treasury Secretary, the overseer of the Internal Revenue Service, have a superior understanding of the tax laws, than it is for, say, 65 year old L.A. Lakers coach Phil Jackson to demand that Kobe Bryant be a better basketball player than he is.

By the way, Mr. Geithner’s excuse for not complying with the tax laws is what really got peoples’ goats.

Turbo Tax did it?

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