Kathy Sebelius's Tax Problems

More

The HHS nominee's tax problems are small -- compared to Tim Geithner's and Tom Daschle's -- and can be summed up like so:

--She and her husband could not locate receipts for three charitable over $250, so she re-paid the charitable deduction she had claimed.

--She and her husband misunderstood home mortgage interest deduction laws and claimed the deduction even after she'd sold the home she'd taken out the mortgage for. (She was underwater, having sold the house for less than the amount on her mortgage.)

--She could not locate receipts for some business expenses she'd claimed.

The total liability is $7,040 plus $878 in interest.

Meanwhile, I am impressed by how uninterested the critics seem in the question of whether Sebelius intended to avoid these taxes. I think the administration handled the nominations badly by pushing Geithner through -- even though he almost certainly intended not to pay some taxes for some period of thime -- and letting Daschle and Nancy Killefer fall by the wayside. That created the perception of getting tough but the reality of a totally incoherent double or triple standard. But everyone agrees that the tax code is labyrinthine and problematic, and to tear Sebelius down you still need to come up with an argument for why her tax issue constitutes a wrong.

Jump to comments

Conor Clarke is the editor, with Michael Kinsley, of Creative Capitalism. He was previously a fellow at The Atlantic and an editor at The Guardian. More

Conor Clarke is the editor, with Michael Kinsley, of Creative Capitalism, an economics blog that was recently published in book form by Simon and Schuster. He was previously a fellow at The Atlantic and an editor at The Guardian. He is also on Twitter.
Get Today's Top Stories in Your Inbox (preview)


Elsewhere on the web

Join the Discussion

After you comment, click Post. If you’re not already logged in you will be asked to log in or register. blog comments powered by Disqus

Video

Miami: The Next Big Start-Up City?

How the city became a center for innovation

Video

Video

A Brief History of Romantic Comedies

From The Atlantic's Chris Orr

Video

Video

Life in 'the New Arctic'

A moving portrait of a fading landscape

Video

Video

The Rise of New York City

A fascinating look at Manhattan in the 1940s

Video

'I Thought It Was Really Funny, but No One Else Did'

A day with New Yorker cartoonist Joe Dator

Video

New Yorkers: The Winemaker

Make your own wine ... in New York City

Video

What Is Methane Hydrate?

"Flaming ice" is a vast natural energy source

Video

NASA's Time-Lapse of the Sun

Now with epic dubstep music

Video

A Video Letter From the Editor

Highlights from the May 2013 issue

Video

Shaken Not Tuned: Cocktail Experiments

Can a tuning fork improve a cocktail?

Video

Video

The Rise of Environmentalism

Tracking 50 years, from the Love Canal disaster to Greenpeace

Video

Is He Cheating? A 1950s Guide

'That little blonde secretary from the office?’

Video

New Yorkers: Vintage Vacuum-Tube Amps

Risking electric shock to restore old amplifiers

Video

The DIY Piano-Bicycle

Everybody needs a hobby

Writers

Up
Down

More in Politics

In Focus

2013 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest

Just In