Alert reader J brings our attention to this AP story, which shows that not only can Nikki, the accounting whiz (just ask her; she’ll tell you), not pay her personal taxes on time, but neither could the business for which she acted as bookkeeper:
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A business owned by the family of South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley has been penalized for failing to pay taxes three times since 2003, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.
Haley has frequently cited her experience as an accountant for her family’s clothing store, saying the state needs such business knowledge at its helm.
Records show the store’s taxes were at least 19 months past due each time the state filed a lien.
Two of the tax liens were for failing to pay corporate income taxes and one was for not turning over taxes withheld from employee checks. The company paid nearly $4,000 to remove the liens.
In response, Haley’s campaign said Thurday she is running for governor in part because she wants to cut red tape and taxes that are too burdensome. Her campaign declined to discuss the specifics of the liens.
“As a family, we saw how hard it was to make a dollar and how easy it was for government to take it,” Haley, a state House member, said in a statement. “I’m committed to making government friendlier to the people and businesses it serves.”
A key part of Haley’s economic plan is to eliminate corporate income taxes, an idea the Legislature rejected earlier this year….
Run that nonsense by us again, Nikki:
“As a family, we saw how hard it was to make a dollar and how easy it was for government to take it…”
Yeah, right! Where, precisely, did y’all SEE that? Obviously, in the case of your family business, the gummint had a heckuva hard time taking it.
And this is, apparently, what Nikki means when she says she wants to run government like her business.
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The Dems are having themselves a high old time with this:
I remember Exotica’s billboard on Gervais street with Cindy Crawford in a very low cut animal print ensemble, making sexyface. My unfashionable husband thought it was a “gentleman’s club.”
–but then when he first moved here, he thought the Lourie’s “taking you there” billboard, showing a well-dressed man in a limo, was for a limo service.
It seems peculiar that conservatives whose constant refrain is the need for personal responsibility on the part of the poor don’t demand it of their candidate. Even without the sexual allegations, the evidence is convincing that Haley is no role model for personal responsibility, commitment to work and family, or honesty and integrity.
Brad, I wasn’t sure if your Midlands readers were aware of the Spartanburg visit and media coverage. These findings are definitely not good timing when you consider the “accountant” vs “liberal trial lawyer” comments that begin around one minute into the video.
http://www2.wspa.com/news/2010/sep/08/haley-and-sheheen-campaign-upstate-ar-805985/
Not sending employee withholding taxes to the IRS?
The IRS is not happy about that!
Yea, Nikki, you’re trying to make yourself a hero. Everybody knows, except for E.W. Cromartie, and the Haley family, that we have to pay our taxes.
Here’s one more example of how Nikky Haley is similar to SC Guvernot Mark Sanford:
* She doesn’t know when to quit digging! She keeps digging her hole deeper and deeper.
Brad
It was the government’s fault.
How dare them expet her family to pay their taxes on time.
Who does she think she is? Nikki Haley?
Exotica International, was the subject of three tax liens since 2003.
On the campaign trail, Haley frequently cites her experience as the financial manager of Exotica.
“The AP also reported that liens are only placed ‘only after long negotiations between the government and the business.”
Two of the tax liens were for failing to pay corporate income taxes and one was for not turning over taxes withheld from employee checks.
-AP
That last part really resonated with me. Money was withheld from employee checks for the express purpose of paying taxes then it wasn’t paid. Unbelievable. She doesn’t give a damn about her workers. She’s just an arrogant business woman trying to feather her nest by getting into politics to change the rules. How shameful is this woman?
I’m about 80% sure now that the allegations by Will Folks and others are true. She seems to have no ethical standards. Why should she stop at tax issues?
The “Dems” better be careful about crowing too much:
From the Los Angeles Times today:
41 Obama White House aides owe the IRS $831,000 in back taxes — and they’re not alone
The Post’s T.W. Farnum did some research and found that out of the total sum, just 638 workers on Capitol Hill owe the IRS $9.3 million in back taxes. As in, overdue. The IRS gets stiffed by the legislative body that controls its budget…
Privacy laws prevent release of individual tax delinquents’ names. But we do know that as of the end of 2009, 41 people inside Obama’s very own White House owe the government they’re allegedly running a total of $831,055 in back taxes. That would cover a lot of special chocolate desserts in the White House Mess.
In the House of Representatives, 421 people owe a total $6,524,892. In the Senate, 217 owe $2,774,836. In the IRS’ parent department, Treasury, 1,204 owe $7,670,814. At the Labor Department, where Secretary Hilda Solis’ husband had some back-tax problems before her confirmation, 463 owe $7,481,463. Eighty-one workers for the Federal Reserve System’s board of governors owe $1,076,733.
Over at the Justice Department, which is so busy enforcing other laws and suing Arizona, 1,971 employees still owe $14,350,152 in overdue taxes.
Thanks for bringing that up, Doug. I had forgotten about it.
I was listening to a report on that on the radio this morning, and had two thoughts:
— Nikki, who rails against gummint, would probably fit right in as a federal bureaucrat, in light of this.
— But in truth, since the report found that only 4 percent of these workers were delinquent in her taxes, Nikki is not as good at responsible accounting (on the most basic level) as 96 percent of federal employees. So she’d better drop that “I’m an accountant and want to run government like a business” garbage.
Oh, and Kathryn, I like that phrase “making sexyface.”
Sounds like something our Russian friend would post on the Facingbook, with a picture of himself getting out of a limousine…
It’s a popular term on the irreverent and totally entertaining site Jezebel!
It is a popular look in photographs of actress/model/whatevers.
The difference between Nikki Haley and Alvin Greene?
Greene won’t get elected.
Brad,
Excellent point!
Where would South Carolina be if Nikki Haley ran South Carolina like Exotica?
South Carolina as a whole, private businesses and private citizens, not even mentioning state government with the employees, would be worse off than California!
But it would be four more years of South Carolina folly for the Daily Show (Jon Stewart) and the Colbert Report.
She’s not an accountant. Has no license or certification in SC, and never has. Perhaps she couldn’t pass the exams.
HF–so she’s a person with an accounting degree, properly referred to as a Bookkeeper?
Imagine if we had a tax system that didn’t require any filing. No deductions, no loopholes, no exemptions. You pay a nickel of every dollar over (say) twice the poverty level. No forms, no penalties, no delays in payment. But then that would make way too much sense.
Well, Brad, since Haley is not currently delinquent in her taxes, she’d fall in the 96% group, not the 4%. I don’t think the report includes those who have been delinquent at one point or another since 2003.
Again, to me, all of this continues to be a non-issue. That is unless I am to believe that Haley’s skill as an accountant qualifies her to be governor — which I don’t. And if that were the case, then there is a bigger knock on her as HF points out in his or her comment above. And still further, if the case is that we’re holding the failures of this company against her, should we credit her for its successes? I think I recall that they are pretty successful.
Of course, we could talk about it all day — that won’t make it less silly. Though, I’ll say it’s a step up from lending attention to idiots who want to burn certain books.
@ David
umm. Not buying that spin.
We are electing a governor here- not local dog catcher.
I have a problem with Nikki’s problematic issue with taxes and paying them on time, etc.
However, I have a bigger problem with her ludicrous explanations for her tax issues.
One shows a lack of time management skills (at the least) and the other shows a disdain for the voters.
@ David–for the record, I don’t think Exotica is very successful. They made it from Bamberg to O-burg to Sunset Boulevard (the Street of Broken Dreams?)in Lexington–so far so good then…. They stopped selling menswear and then closed their shop on 378 and later re-opened on an appointment only basis there, before moving into space in a nearby office park. Don’t know what the sales figures are, but from the street, that doesn’t bode for successful.
Sadly, many of our uneducated & unemployed voters will vote for this republican candidate whose party tried to block their unemployment benefits extention. Many of them also think that she is a native american indian. It’s a sad state we live in. GOP preying on that population.
Exactly how many passes does a candidate – any candidate – get?
Even if you ignore the infidelity allegations, there are myriad issues involving Haley, including her ability to pay her family’s taxes on time, her family business’s taxes on time, her use of a legislative exemption from the state’s FOIA law and refusal to provide copies of emails and hard drive data from her computers to reporters investigating allegations of marital infidelity, along with her previous failure to disclose more than $40,000 in income received from Wilbur Smith, which was doing business with the state.
And of course there was the incident last year when she said she couldn’t remember whether she flew business class or coach on a trade mission to China with Gov. Sanford in 2007.
Any one of these issues could have sunk a lot of candidates, and certainly a combination of two or more would be a definite death-knell.
So why does Haley continue to cruise along? As someone who has almost always voted Republican, I have to wonder: Are the voters of this state really this blind?
We’ll find out soon, won’t we?
This is the acid test for democracy in SC. We’re going to find out whether Republicans and independents are as blind and uncaring as the Democrats who voted for Alvin Greene.
If so, we might need a serious rethink of this whole electing-our-leaders thing.
Anyone else a little queasy at the thought of Nikki in a position that will put her in the national spotlight?
I am.
Barry – You don’t have to buy my “spin”. Although I don’t know why I would be “spinning” for a candidate I don’t support and will be voting against. But thanks for responding thoughtfully.
And you are right. We are electing a governor here. Not a dog catcher. Not a bookkeeper. I’ll be voting based on the ideas the candidate has and the policies he or she would likely support. The email and Wilbur Smith items matter too.
But y’all feel free to vote on Haley’s personal issues and skill as a businesswoman. And although these tax problems are a knock on her credibility in touting her skills as a businesswoman, I and not going to judge her career and ability as such. But then again, I don’t have to — it’s not what I’m voting on.
Kathryn – For the record I said “pretty successful” not “very successful”. Words matter.
For me the most troubling issue is not giving the withheld employee taxes to the government. That is a flat out betrayal of her employee’s trust and abbrogation of her responsibility. If she treats her employees this way, why should we believe she would treat the citizens of SC with any more respect? Is she just incompetent or is it a choice to not pay to make some kind of philisophical stand against taxes she doesn’t believe in? Either way, these are not traits I want in a governor.
@Carolina Parakeet– Yes, the Republican voters are apparently blind to Haley’s shortcomings. Unlike Greene’s voters, who merely voted Democratic in a near vacuum of information–which is wrong–Haley voters would be actively ignoring a great deal of red flags!
Nice handle, btdubs.
FWIW, the gummint (those nasty guys at the IRS) takes a very dim view of failure to remit trust fund taxes in a timely manner. In some circumstances, they can come after your personal assets for such a default.
@David–so “pretty”is less than “very”?
@Steve Gordy– From what I’ve read, there aren’t a lot of personal assets either–personal taxes seem to be paid on the same extremely delayed schedule.
Kathryn – I read back over what I wrote and admit it wasn’t all that clear. So I apologize. But yes, that’s what I was going for — moderately successful.
But it doesn’t really matter anyway. Government is not a business.
Yup, government is not a business!