When even someone as smart as Tim Geitner can't figure it out, how are we commoners supposed to figure it out?
More "unintentional errors": Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius.
UPDATE:
More obserevations: She paid $7,040 in back taxes and $878 in interest to amend returns from 2005 through 2007. No mention of penalties. No mention of jail time. And she "mistakenly believed" she could deduct interest for a house she no longer owned. Honest mistakes. And I always thought ignorance of the law was no excuse for breaking it.
UPDATE 2:
Dammit. Just when I think I'm making a good point all on my own, along comes Scrappleface. This is a nice bit tho:
“Tom, Tim and Kathleen are some of the smartest people on the planet,” said President Obama, “and if they can’t file an accurate tax return, it’s not a reflection on their competence or honesty, but rather on the tax code that I inherited from George W. Bush.”
The president ordered the IRS to trash more than 800 tax forms, replacing them with a simple postcard for the taxpayer to record his income, multiply it by a rate of 17 percent, and send it in. That rate will apply to all but the “very wealthy” whose rate will be 83 percent.
“The rich, meaning anyone who earns more than $40,000 per year in the private sector, will of course continue to reimburse the rest of us for the surplus blessings they have received,” the president said. “And they’ll be eager to do so out of gratitude for the simplified tax form. After all, people like Tom Daschle, Tim Geithner and Kathleen Sebelius have been wracked with guilt over filing false returns almost from the moment they were nominated.”
