For those who have been sitting, drumming their fingers on the desk, and staring at the clock since September, waiting for Sarah Palin’s “per diem gate” to swing wide open, your wait is over.
We all remember how Governor Palin collected “per diem” payments, which are designed to compensate legislators and state employees for meals and lodging when they are working far from home. The difference between the per diem money Palin collected, and the per diem money that legislators collect, is that they collect it when they are in Juneau. Palincollects it while living in her own home in Wasilla, and for eating moose chili in her own kitchen. As a matter of fact, she charged the state for 312 nights in Wasilla in her first 19 months in office. (Gets out calculator….tap tap tap…that’s….54% of the time) Last time I checked, the official duty station for the governor is the capital, which is actually Juneau, not Wasilla.
The governor’s office wouldn’t say this week how much she owes in back taxes for meal money, or whether she intends to continue to receive the per diem allowance. As of December, she was still charging the state for meals and incidentals.
“The amount of taxes owed is a private matter,” Sharon Leighow, Palin’s spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “If the governor collects future per diem, those documents would be a matter of public record.”
Back in September, the Washington Post reported that Palin had charged the residents of Alaska $17,000 for ”meals and incidentals”, and paid no taxes on it. That’s more than a full-time minimum wage worker in the state of Alaska makes in a year. Nice income, if it actually worked that way.
But, alas, the IRS doesn’t see it quite the same way the governor does. They think that if you take the money, you’d better pay taxes on it, and Palin didn’t. Oops. So that means a certain Republican Golden Girl, a certain future hope for the GOP, a certain potential candidate in 2012, owes the IRS (scary organ chord)
back taxes. One can only imagine the looks on the faces of those at the little Republican giddy-fest, who have been rubbing their hands together and doing a little jig over the fact that Tom Daschle had to step down from his potential cabinet post because of (same scary organ chord)
owing back taxes. I imagine the looks on their faces akin to the look of someone who has been struck in the face with a wet fish. I have not actually seen someone who has been struck in the face with a wet fish, (not on purpose, anyway), but I’ll bet it would be close.
Ready for the “Sarah Spin”?
“Last fall we raised questionsabout longstanding practices within the Department of Administration regarding tax treatment of per diem payments,” Kreitzer wrote in an exchange of e-mails over the past few days with the Daily News.
Translation: We "raised the questions" after we were busted by those damn "outside media" people at the Watshington Post.
“At the Governor’s request, we reviewed the situation to determine whether we were in full compliance with the pertinent Internal Revenue Service regulations,” Kreitzer wrote. “As a result of this review, we determined that per diem needs to be treated as income, requiring a revision of W-2 forms for any affected employees.”
Translation: We figured we'd better come out with it before somebody else did, and made us look even worse than we already do, and maybe if we can make it sound like it was our idea, we can salvage the small shred of Palin's reputation for being a fiscal watchdog that is left. Oh God...Is it 5:00 yet??
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