With Palin’s Returns, Tax Profs Move Back to the Spotlight

[maddezmom]

With Palin’s Returns, Tax Profs Move Back to the Spotlight
Posted by Dan Slater



Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, listens to questions during an interview in her office, Dec. 13, 2007. (AP Photo/Chris Miller, File)
Tax lawyers are feasting on Sarah Palin’s tax returns. On Friday, the Alaska Governor and Republican vice presidential nominee released her returns and personal financial disclosure report. According to the WSJ, they showed her to be the lowest earner of the four national candidates. According to tax law profs Jack Bogdanski, of Lewis & Clark, and Bryan Camp, of Texas Tech, they also show that she owes tens of thousands of dollars in additional taxes, penalties and interest. (Here’s another report from the NYT.)

Click here for a round-up from the Tax Prof blog’s Paul Caron.

Bogdanski writes that there’s “no serious debate . . . about the fact that at least the amounts paid for the children’s travel — $24,728.83 in 2007, according to the Washington Post — are taxable. The campaign’s tax lawyer has got at least that much of the law, and perhaps more, wrong. . . . And the fact that the state payroll office got it wrong, too, doesn’t erase the Palins’ unpaid tax liability.”

Professor Camp gives us a line-item analysis:

The Palins did not report as income some $17,000 that Governor Palin’s employer (the State of Alaska) paid her as an “allowance” for her travel. Can they do that? Yes, most likely.

The Palins did not report as income some $43,000 that the State of Alaska paid the Governor as an “allowance” for her husband and children’s travel. Can they do that? No, most likely not.

more:http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/10/06/with-palins-returns-tax-profs-move-back-to-the-spotlight/

[TwilightGardener]

1. So...add "tax cheat" to her other career highlights--wolf slaughter, rape-kit charges as mayor,

per diem payments for living at home, Troopergate, hiring a high-school buddy for Agriculture Secretary because the woman "always liked cows", buying herself an SUV on Wasilla's dime, leaving her town in debt, letting (high-school-diploma'd) Todd do most of her budget work. Could go on and on--how did this woman become Governor, Alaska?