“Would your opinion on the penalty issue change at all if you considered that the governor’s own staff may have influenced the treatment of the per diems by the state’s finance division on her W-2?”

Goodness, gracious, yes! That is, if the Governor knew about it (i.e. ordered the staff to take care of it). Of course, then we’ll be talking about criminal not civil sanctions.

I read the AP article at google.com. I don’t see where it is suggested that the Governor’s staff “influenced the treatment of the per diems.”

You raise interesting points; however, I think we all need to be careful not to insinuate that she committed a crime without some corroborating evidence.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gp77q25DPCEibEdOBHWiKkz5EVWQD93LTUNG0

And that that treatment violates the state’s own published policies on such matters?

http://bojack.org/2008/10/palin_per_diems_the_tax_plot_t.html

If Palin owes taxes, she’ll pay the IRS plus whatever penalties (there won’t be any) and interest are assessed.

But so far I haven’t seen a shred of evidence that suggests she intentionally omitted taxable income from her return.

She hired qualified tax preparers to do her return; relied on a W-2 that was issued by the State, and then, when the suggestion was made that she might have failed to include the per diems, she got a tax opinion letter from a respected, experienced tax attorney that concluded that she had a right to rely on the W-2.

There is no there there.

Having said that, I enjoy your blog.

http://bojack.org/2008/10/theres_no_debate_palins_owe_th.html

But paying late means they are certain to get charged with interest and a late payment penalty.

I have a couple of clients that for some reason or another don’t send in their payments with their returns. We e-file a lot of returns and a lot of them send out paper checks and either do it late or also forget. Is it really that big of a deal?