Barack Obama Hires Another Tax-Screwer-Upper

“I was going to add up how many Obama appointees/employees have tax problems when it dawned on me that I could save time by counting the ones who don’t.” (Source: The Tax Lawyer’s Blog)



Obama’s Pick for State Department Post Failed to File Her 2005 & 2006 Tax Returns; She Blames Her Cardiologist Husband and the Post Office

capricia-penavic-marshall
Capricia Marshall in 1998.

The New York Times reports that President Obama’s choice as Chief of Protocol for the State Department, Capricia Penavic Marshall (J.D. 1990, Case Western), and her cardiologist husband, failed to file their 2005 and 2006 tax returns. She balmed the problem “on the Postal Service and on miscommunication between her husband and their accountant”:

Ms. Marshall, who was the social secretary in the Clinton White House, notified the Obama administration about the late filings before she was nominated on May 14. She has since provided written answers to questions about the matter from Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, which will hold a hearing on the appointment next Wednesday. The post requires Senate confirmation. …

Ms. Marshall may fare better because, after ultimately filing the 2005 and 2006 federal and local paperwork, she was entitled to $37,259 in refunds, according to data she provided to Mr. Lugar. … An aide to Mrs. Clinton, Philippe Reines, said, “In the end, only two American taxpayers were adversely impacted by this inadvertent lapse.”

In her written answers and in accounts she gave to government officials, Ms. Marshall has said the errors were unintentional. She has said that her husband failed to recognize that the couple’s accountant had included the tax returns for 2005 in a binder he provided with copies of the returns, and that the actual paperwork was never mailed.

The couple learned something was awry, Ms. Marshall has said, when the IRS notified them last fall that their 2006 return had never arrived. She wrote that an agent “advised us that there were a large number of tax returns misplaced by the D.C. post office for the 2006 tax year.”
June 21, 2009

Source: TaxProf Blog

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