Penalty Up

Daniel Shaviro flags us to an interesting item I had missed--a New York Times online chat about the Daschle/Geithner tax problems. I'm no tax lawyer (though I am burrowing through my own paperwork this week, grr) but I am pretty much willing to sign on to Shaviro's view:

I myself rated what they did as pretty bad - highly self-serving "mistakes" though short of fraud - and suggested that they voluntarily pay the Treasury what in effect would be self-imposed penalties.

I'd have a tough time reaching a conclusion of outright fraud here. I'm inclined to suspect that Geithner is a chiseler and that Daschle--who knows? People do make mistakes that stupid. The puzzling part is that in both cases, we've got public men who by nature aspire to some new public office. You'd think the first order of business would be to keep on board the best possible tax adviser, and to make sure you put out these fires before they arise.