Rangel Owes Federal Taxes, Too

Just now, Representative Charles Rangel, who is also the chairman of the House's Ways and Means Committee, gave a press conference to discuss his rent-stabilized apartments, forgetting to pay taxes on rental income on his villa in the Dominican Republic, and using Congressional letterhead to solicit donations for a City College center named after him. With his homespun wisdom and bowtie, Rangel claimed ignorance about the rental income situation in the D.R. (he said he called for more info, but they kept talking Spanish!), blamed the Republicans in Congress for being overly partisan and said he'll weather through it.

In the mean time, Rangel will file amended tax returns. While last week his lawyer Lanny Davis said Rangel would only owe city and state back taxes, now Davis says Rangel will also owe federal taxes (characterized as a "modest amount"). However, this is where it gets tricky: Per the NY Times, "Mr. Rangel’s failure to pay all his federal taxes could be politically significant, since he leads the House committee responsible for the federal tax code."

House Republicans sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter saying, "Given Chairman Rangel's continuing ethical lapses, he cannot effectively carry out his duties as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. You, as the speaker of the House, must insist that Rep. Rangel step down from his Ways and Means chairmanship pending an investigation of his ethical lapses."

Davis responded, "Mr. Boehner's hyper-partisan attack on an honorable man, Charles Rangel, is completely contrary to the spirit of bipartisanship. Of course Mr. Rangel will not step down from his chairmanship even temporarily, but trusts the bipartisan ethics committee to look into the facts, as opposed to the innuendo that apparently Mr. Boehner prefer."