Not only did the man President Obama tapped to become Treasury Secretary neglect to properly pay his taxes. He used mass-market online software to crunch the numbers for him.
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Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa) opened his questioning period during Treasury Secretary-elect Timothy Geithner Senate confirmation hearing by talking about the nation's hundreds of millions of unpaid tax debt.
Geithner contributed to that staggering number by failing to pay $34,000 in his own taxes from 2001 to 2004.
"The person ultimately responsible for tax compliance must be credible," Grassley lectured. The senator continued to ask a series of procedural questions about how Geithner prepared his taxes. Grassey wanted to know if Geitner did his taxes himself or not.
"Did you use any software to prepare your taxes?" Grassley asked.
The man who is on pace to run the Internal Revenue Service was caught off-guard. After stammering for a moment Geithner admitted he used online software to do his taxes during the time he neglected to pay his taxes properly.
"I used Turbotax to prepare my returns," Geithner said.
"Did the software prompt you to pay those taxes?" Grassley followed up.
"Not to my recollection," Geithner said.
Not a great endorsement for Turbotax in anticipation of the upcoming tax season. Or, Geithner, either.
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