Tax Lawyer's Blog

Tax Girl blogged yesterday that embattled House Ways and Means Chairman, Charlie Rangel, in Rangel Refuses to Give up Chair Despite Probe.  Here’s the Girl:

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) has announced that he will not step down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, despite an ethics investigation into his personal finances.

Instead, according to his lawyer, Rangel will hire a “nationally renowned forensic accounting firm” to review and report his finances. After the review, the report will be released publicly, along with 20 years of tax returns.

I previously blogged about Rangel’s tax problem being really much ado about nothing at Give Me That Return Charlie Rangel Before You Hurt Yourself. 

But in that article I didn’t address Rangel’s disturbingly silly excuse for why he failed to comply with both U.S. Federal tax law and Dominican law:

“Every time I thought I was getting somewhere, they’d start speaking Spanish.”

Tax Girl goes funny on us with this:

Really, Congressman Rangel? That’s the best you can offer?  Cause $75,000 would buy you one heck of a translator… You could even tap the population of your own district- where more than half of the residents speak Spanish. Someone, somewhere could help you say: Tengo que pagar mis impuestos.

And check out this blog from Patrick Henry Press News:

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) has taken a good deal of heat for telling reporters last week that he failed to pay taxes on income from his Dominican Republic villa because of a language barrier.

Well today, Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo (R), the nativist congressman and one-time presidential contender, offered some advice: Endorse my English-only legislation. From Tancredo’s September 17th, letter to Rangel:

I am sympathetic to your concerns, and would like to invite you to co-sponsor legislation I introduced (H.J.Res.19) which would make English the official language of the United States.

While passage of this bill will do little to reform our hopelessly complex tax code – or assist you in escaping your current ethical dilemma – its passage may help ensure that future generations of Americans less wealthy than yourself can live in a country where they can use an ATM, call a customer service department, or shop at their local grocery store without having to find a translator or “Press 1 for English” as they must often do in the America of today.

Don’t hold your breath for Rangel to reply.

Whether you agree with Tancredo or not, that’s funny.

I haven’t seen such refreshing irony since the Bush v. Gore recount debacle of 2000 when Fidel Castro offered to send a team of observers to Florida to oversee the election process.

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