Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Good Morning: Except Maybe If You're the Republican Running for Ward 3 City Council

Today's the calm before the storm. After morning lows in the 60's, Tuesday will bring highs in the mid-70's, with mostly sunny skies. On Wednesday it will be even warmer --the upper 70's-- with some thunderstorms possible later in the day. Thursday, also in the 70's, but on Friday the upper 50's will be as good as it gets.

If you're David Hedgepeth, Republican candidate for Ward 3 City Council, you must have been jumping up and down because you got the Washington Post's endorsement last week. That is until the Washington Post reported yesterday that you owe $12,608.13 in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. Hedgepeth told the Post, "I've had some financial difficulty. A lot of people have had financial difficulty lately."

6 comments:

  1. I guess Cheh has plenty of "tax-free" funds.

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  2. Owing back taxes (or never filing at all) never disqualified Marion Barry from the DC Council or Eleanor Holmes ("Representation Without Taxation") Norton from running for Congress the first time.

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  3. I still like him. I have had financial difficulties more than once in the past, so I can sympathize.

    Maybe he has an arrangement with the IRS, it doesn't mention that. Lots of people owe back taxes and make payments, etc., with the IRS.

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  4. Hey, Kwame Brown is running for Chair of the City Council and they say he has like $750K in unpaid debts. That's a whole lot more than owing the IRS a measly $12K.

    According to the IRS tax tables for 2009, that's only approximately the amount of taxes owed on $65,700 income. See here:

    http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040tt.pdf

    Some food for thought.

    Oh, and just to clarify, I'm not with the Hedgepeth campaign, nor do I even have a "dog" in this race, as I don't vote in Ward 3.

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  5. Interesting that he had $2,300 to loan his campaign, but no money to pay his taxes.

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  6. Hedgepeth could have repayment arrangements with the IRS, but that's not something that's public record. I can sympathize with him owing back taxes.

    He's not like Marion Barry who didn't even file his IRS forms for many years, much less pay a whole lot more of back taxes than Hedgepeth (Barry's back taxes were several times that amount, as I recall). And, despite that, Barry got elected and re-elected to public office several times. He also hardly spent any jail time for all those offenses, and didn't reform even after being threatened with more jail time for non-filing of taxes.

    But, I guess that DC often seems to be "bash the Republicans" territory. I'm an independent voter, but it seems that in light of so many non-tax paying Democrats not only in DC, but around the U.S., Democrats surely shouldn't be the ones casting the first stones.

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