Al Sharpton: Paying Taxes Is For The Little People
(He's much too busy race-baiting to worry about such mundanities.) Besides, money and Al have a one-way relationship. Money goes in, not out. Even -- as you'll see from the NYT piece -- if he owes it to the federal government.

Paul Caron writes at TaxProfBlog about a NYT story -- "As Sharpton Rose, So Did His Unpaid Taxes," by Russ Buettner. Caron writes:

Mr. Sharpton's influence and visibility have reached new heights this year, fueled by his close relationships with the mayor and the president. Obscured in his ascent, however, has been his troubling financial past, which continues to shadow his present.

Mr. Sharpton has regularly sidestepped the sorts of obligations most people see as inevitable, like taxes, rent and other bills. Records reviewed by The New York Times show more than $4.5 million in current state and federal tax liens against him and his for-profit businesses. And though he said in recent interviews that he was paying both down, his balance with the state, at least, has actually grown in recent years. His National Action Network appears to have been sustained for years by not paying federal payroll taxes on its employees.

With the tax liability outstanding, Mr. Sharpton traveled first class and collected a sizable salary, the kind of practice by nonprofit groups that the United States Treasury's inspector general for tax administration recently characterized as "abusive," or "potentially criminal" if the failure to turn over or collect taxes is willful.

Mr. Sharpton and the National Action Network have repeatedly failed to pay travel agencies, hotels and landlords. He has leaned on the generosity of friends and sometimes even the organization, intermingling its finances with his own to cover his daughters' private school tuition.

If you want to be a crook and get away with it, be in government. If you want to get away with more, be someone who has consistently used his skin color to get ahead -- and never mind whether the allegations he's making are life-ruining to the falsely accused, or whether he's racist and race-baiting.

From the NYT piece:

He accused an upstate New York prosecutor, Steven A. Pagones, of being part of a group of white men whom he said had abducted and raped the teenager Tawana Brawley, an allegation that a grand jury report showed had been fabricated.

He often used strident language that many saw as inflaming racial tensions. During rallies at the Slave Theater in Brooklyn, he characterized black people who disagreed with him as "yellow niggers" and called white people "crackers." After a car in a prominent Hasidic rabbi's motorcade jumped a curb in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn and killed a 7-year-old black boy in 1991, Mr. Sharpton referred to the neighborhood's Hasidic Jews as "diamond merchants." In 1995, he referred to a Harlem businessman who wanted to expand his store into a space that had been occupied by a black-owned business as a "white interloper."

A comment from the NYT:

Westside Guy, L.A.
Mr. Sharpton has never been anything more than a craven opportunist. People were wondering who paid his daughter's tuition at Poly Prep years ago. He has, like Jesse Jackson, used race as a trump card to line his pockets and taken advantage of prejudice as a means of personal advancement. He is a con man, plain and simple. And now, he has succeeded to the point where corporations are lining up top fill his pockets. I cash only hope that someone has the guts to charge him with Tax Fraud. But I doubt it. Too many friends in high places now afraid he'll play the race card. Hats off to Reverend Al. He's scammed everyone, including the IRS. Shame on Mayor DeBlasio for giving this guy air cover.

via @instapundit