‘Tax fraud is a serious crime,” tweeted New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, in a boast about the indictment of the Syracuse owner of an auto-repair shop for his failure to pay $125,000 in sales taxes he’d collected.
Schneiderman is right that evading taxes is a serious matter.
Unless, that is, you’re Al Sharpton.
Turns out Rev. Al still owes Albany $916,000 from tax liens filed against him between 2008 and 2010. And while Sharpton recently insisted to The New York Times he’d paid off those liens, state officials say otherwise.
Nor is this Sharpton’s first and only tax difficulty. On the contrary: He’s long been in fiscal hot water with state and federal authorities over unpaid taxes, non-existent record-keeping and improper use of non-profit funds for personal expenses.
And let’s not forget the two fires — six years apart — that conveniently destroyed Sharpton’s financial records just as he was about to turn them over to officials.
His current outstanding liens reportedly total more than $4.5 million, which he’s been paying down.
But save for a 1993 guilty plea to a misdemeanor count of failing to file a return, Sharpton has never faced criminal tax-related charges. Officials have always accepted his explanation that when it comes to keeping finances straight, he’s simply in over his head.
This despite his serial tax problems — including the kind of practices the US Treasury’s inspector general has called “potentially criminal” if done willfully. Meanwhile, he lives high on the hog.
So here’s a question for New York’s attorney general: When will we see a Schneiderman tweet about the Rev. Al’s unpaid taxes?