Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) owes over $2,000 in unpaid taxes and is fighting the bill with a warrant from the New York Tax Department hanging over her head, reports the New York Post.

Ocasio-Cortez has become a national celebrity since being elected to Congress in 2018. Her annual salary as a congresswoman is $174,000, and who knows how much more she makes as a celebrity, as America’s Socialist It-Girl.

Ocasio-Cortez also believes the rest of us do not pay enough money in taxes and is constantly calling for Americans to pay more.

This tax warrant stems from a failed business Ocasio-Cortez launched in 2012, an urban publishing company called Brook Avenue Press, that went belly up in 2016.

The tax bill itself is seven years old, and the warrant was issued in July of 2017, which was two months after AOC launched her congressional bid. At that time, the unpaid taxes amounted to $1,618. Interest and penalties have increased the bill to the amount to $2,088.

A representative for the socialist congresswoman says the bill is in dispute.

“The congresswoman is still in the process of contesting the tax warrant. The business has been closed for several years now, and so we believe that the state Tax Department has continued to collect the franchise tax in error,” AOC spokeswoman Lauren Hitt told the Post, who confirmed the bill is still not paid.

“As anyone who’s tried to contest a tax bill in error knows, it takes time,” Hitt added.

I can tell you from my own experience that that is the biggest pile of nonsense I’ve ever heard.

I’ve been paying taxes for 40 years now, and over four decades you are going to have some issues with the IRS, so I have had my share — some of them my fault, some of them the fault of the IRS, some of them no one’s fault. So I can tell you that each and every time, at both the state and federal level, the IRS is always eager to work things out as quickly and conveniently as possible.

Each and every time I have run into an issue, the local (in three states) and federal tax folks have worked with me to track down the problem, solve the problem, and put the issue to bed. A couple of times, I’ve had to pay more in taxes. A whole lot of times, I misfiled something. A couple of times the IRS misfiled something. Once — no joke — an accountant had to go to prison. So in my long experience, I can tell you that if you work in good faith to get these matters resolved, state and federal tax agencies will work with you to get them resolved.

What that means is that the Ocasio-Cortez matter being open for seven years is almost certainly not the fault of New York’s state tax people. Further, this ending up in a warrant status is almost certainly not the fault of New York’s state tax people. It does not take seven years or even one year or even one month to dispute a bill.

To that end, I spent more than a decade as a corporate collector working with every conceivable type of business to collect overdue monies owed to my clients, and working out disputes was a major part of the job. Yes, it could get hairy and complicated; it could involve contracts, bills of lading, canceled checks, invoices, and proofs of delivery; sometimes it even involved international shipping and contracts. But if everyone was acting in good faith, it was always resolved quickly.

So what we have here with Ocasio-Cortez is just one more example of a left-wing tyrant who doesn’t want to live under her own rules.

 

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