Millions Lost As Top Republican Senator Dodges Tax Payments for 8 Years Now
It was revealed just last Friday that the Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, a Republican, has been evading taxes from some of his undisclosed incomes. The top state legislator had not properly declared his earnings from some of his investments including real estates, and hedge funds, as The Wall Street Journal reports. The most comical part of the bizarre is that the politician is ranked third on the Republican on the senate’s banking committee whose main job is real estate and financial services oversight.
The reporter claims that Corker has been concealing, at least, two million dollars’ worth incomes from his three separate personal investments in hedge funds. The legislator has also not clearly disclosed millions of dollars earnings from investments in commercial real estates. More millions of dollars from other assets and financial gains from transactions have also been draped, according to The Wall Street Journal’s report.
This instance is not the first time that the Republican Senator has concealed incomes from some of his investment since he assumed office in the year 2007. He also has not been paying taxes for at least $3.8 million dollars from his commercial real estate holdings between 2007 and 2014. The legislator has attempted to defend himself since The Wall Street Journal reported his defiance.
According to his message to the Fortune and the WSJ, he expressed his disappointment in what he referred to as ‘filing errors’ in the financial disclosure reports. In his prepared statement, Corker claimed that they had done a complete third-party review and rectified the oversight. He also said that he had engaged an accounting firm to see into the matter after The Wall Street Journal made the inquiries.
According to the Senate Committee on Banking where Corker is the third-ranked Republican, “Members of Congress have free reign in their personal investments as long as they disclose them so that the public can determine whether or not there is a conflict of interest.”
The Executive Director of the Campaign for Accountability, Anne Weismann told The Fortune that,
“The organization plans to request a thorough investigation into Corker’s finances. Last month, the group filed complaints with the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Senate ethics committee, requesting a separate investigation into Corker over potential insider trading and making false financial statements.”
The allegations can constitute a tax-evasion felony if proven to be an intentional omission for such a long period, which would cost Corker. Interestingly, Corkers move to employ an accounting firm, most likely to keep watch that such non-compliance do not resurface again in the future, can be interpreted as an admission that he has been aware of the omissions ever since. Had he taken this move earlier, no accounting firm would have risked its reputation to fail to report all of the politician’s income.
It is unexpected and uncalled for that elected oversight official can be evading taxes, but may be acceptable to have come from a Republican. A former chief counsel of the committee of the Senate and House Ethics viewed the whole saga differently. Robert Walker termed it as a “teaching moment’, which adds to Corker’s comics. He told the Journal that Corkers situation did not call for a warning or punishment from the ethics committee. Walker rather sees it as a lesson to legislators to be well versed with tax requirements before attempting to file their annual reports. These sentiments are just in-line with the Republicans’ trend of poor moral leadership and hypocrisy. Isn’t it amazing?