Trump Fed Pick Stephen Moore Owes $75,000 to IRS

[GMDino]

I meant to post about this eal winner a few days ago and this article reminded me.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-27/trump-s-fed-pick-moore-owes-75-000-to-irs-court-document-says

Quote:Stephen Moore, whom President Donald Trump said he’ll nominate for a seat on the Federal Reserve, owes more than $75,000 in taxes and other penalties, according to the U.S. government.



A federal tax lien filed in the circuit court for Montgomery County, Maryland, where Moore owns a house, says that the government won a judgment against Moore for $75,328.80. The January 2018 filing said it was for unpaid taxes from the 2014 tax year and could accrue additional penalties and other costs.


An IRS spokesman said he was prohibited by law from commenting on the case. A White House spokesman declined to comment. Moore referred questions about the tax debt to his wife, Anne Carey.

Carey said the dispute originated with a deduction on Moore’s 2014 tax return in which he accidentally claimed the sum of his alimony and child-support payments to his former wife, when only alimony is deductible. Because Moore had moved, he never received notifications from the IRS after the agency audited the return, she said.


The IRS disallowed the entire deduction and added penalties and interest, Carey said. She said she and Moore have now resolved to pay the lien as quickly as possible but will continue to press their dispute with the IRS.
She said the couple had overpaid their taxes in more recent years by about $50,000 and will seek that amount in a refund when they file their 2018 tax return.

“It was not an attempt at defrauding the U.S. government,” Carey said.

Carey said the White House hasn’t raised alarm about the tax lien, which was reported earlier by the Guardian.

Trump announced last week he would nominate Moore, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, for an open seat on the Fed’s board of governors. The White House hasn’t yet officially submitted Moore’s nomination to the Senate, which must vote to confirm him.

More about him:

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/27/707312764/economists-forecast-stephen-moore-wouldnt-be-good-for-fed-post

Quote:President Trump's pick for a powerful post on the Federal Reserve Board is drawing mounting criticism from economists of all stripes.



Trump said on Friday that he plans to nominate Stephen Moore, a campaign adviser and conservative pundit, to serve on the Fed's Board of Governors.


"I have known Steve for a long time – and have no doubt he will be an outstanding choice!" Trump tweeted.


The IRS is trying to collect more than $75,000 in back taxes from Moore, according to tax lien records first reported by The Guardian. Moore is disputing the tax.


Even before that news broke, the idea of installing Moore on the central bank's governing body had prompted a strong backlash.


"Almost universally, economists have spoken out and said this is not a fit candidate for a board position," said William Luther, who directs the Sound Money Project at the American Institute for Economic Research.


Moore has spent decades opining on economics — at the conservative Heritage Foundation, on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and on cable TV.


"I've been a economic policy person in Washington for well over 30 years," 
Moore told NPR's Morning Edition. "So I do think that I have probably more experience in this game than many, many other people and in fact a lot of the people who have served on the Federal Reserve Board."


It's precisely that track record that worries many economists.


"More than possibly any other economist in modern America, he has a track record of getting the big issues wrong," said Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan. 


"Not just occasionally but time after time."


During the Great Recession, for example, Moore complained that the Fed's efforts to prop up the economy with low interest rates would spark runaway inflation. That never materialized. Today, with unemployment below 4 percent, Moore is making the opposite case, warning that by raising interest rates last year, the Fed was causing a dangerous drop in prices, or deflation.


That prompted a testy exchange in December on CNN with Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell, who pointed out — correctly — that none of the indicators watched by the Fed show deflation.


Critics say that Moore's counterintuitive prescriptions for Fed policy — tight money in bad times, loose money in good — seem to be guided more by who's in the White House than any objective measure of the economy.


"If your goal is to stabilize the macroeconomy, then Stephen Moore's policies go in exactly the wrong direction," said Luther of the American Institute for Economic Research. "If instead your goal is to push Democrats out of office and get Republicans re-elected, then Stephen Moore's policies make perfect sense."


Opponents say that this partisan bent could jeopardize the Fed's reputation for independence and apolitical action.


Moore's credentials as a partisan player are well-established. He was one of the founders of the Club for Growth, which advocates limited government and low taxes. 
In 2012, Moore helped design a tax-cutting experiment in Kansas that blew a big hole in the state's budget but failed to produce the promised economic boom.


"There is this segment of economists who want to believe, whether the facts support them or not, that low-tax states will grow better than other states," said Miriam Pepper, who was editorial page editor at The Kansas City Star. "It certainly didn't work in Kansas. It was a disaster, so they've had to retreat."


Eventually Kansas lawmakers changed course and reversed the tax cuts. 
Nevertheless, Moore wrote an op-ed for the Star in 2014 defending the cuts and insisting that low-tax states outperform others. Only after the column was published did Pepper and her colleagues discover that Moore had his numbers wrong. When the paper ran a correction with the right numbers, the data didn't support Moore's argument.


"That kind of factual error is just unacceptable," Pepper said. "While he was the so-called top economist at Heritage, we decided we were finished with him."


Even conservative economists who might share Moore's policy preferences have spoken out against his nomination. Harvard University economist Greg Mankiw, who advised then-President George W. Bush, wrote that Moore doesn't have the "intellectual gravitas" for an important job like the Fed.


Professional economists don't have a vote on Moore's nomination, though. Senators do. And so far no Republican senator has spoken out in opposition.

An so, with no surprise to anyone, DJT nominates another flunky who says nice things about him who isn't capable of the job.

[*michaelsean*]

The tax thing could be an honest mistake although his accountant should be fired if it was a mistake.

As an aside, I received a bill for $50,000 from the IRS two years ago. Almost had a stroke. I knew I didn't owe it, but that was a rough couple of months. It had to do with borrowing and repaying from a 401 in 60 days or whatever the time frame is.

[GMDino]

(03-29-2019, 09:38 AM)michaelsean Wrote: The tax thing could be an honest mistake although his accountant should be fired if it was a mistake.  

As an aside, I received a bill for $50,000 from the IRS two years ago.  Almost had a stroke.  I knew I didn't owe it, but that was a rough couple of months.  It had to do with borrowing and repaying from a 401 in 60 days or whatever the time frame is.

Letters from the IRS are MUCH better than paying for a stress test at the hospital!  

But to this Moore guy, he's also not very good at what Trump wants him to part of.  Color me stunned.