Here, the headline is "Franken pays $70,000 back taxes, penalties."
Yet read the item.
It appears that he used a Subchapter S corporation for his personal services business, speeches and entertainment, nationwide, as invited as scheduled.
It appears, although Strib kind of horses the story up, that the original incorporation was in New York, with the firm registered as a "foreign" corporation in California and Minnesota - those being the key states where Franken earned income.
Then, as an accounting matter trusted to the accountants, money was earned at a number of venues, not allocated that way by the accountants, and hence over-allocated as income earned in Minnesota and in New York.
Strib, in the details buried in the body of the article, reports the difference will be about $4000, net, once things are straightened out. It attributes that number to Franken sources, and presents no evidence to rebut the number. It's not investigative journalism, which would cost money, it is low-budget low-quality STRIB.
Presumably that netting out to a balance of only $4000 includes penalties, Strib says so, and imposed penalties can be quite harsh and extreme when innocent error and nothing more is at issue.
That net of $4000 is far less than the headlined $70,000.
Is the headline false, no.
Is it misleading.
Ya betcha. Franken is getting unfair treatment, from STRIB.
State taxation patterns differ, and money misallocated as Minnesota earnings would have been taxed in the incrementally highest Minnesota bracket that Franken's earnings exposed him to, in-state.
Had Franken been invited and paid in Washington, Florida, and Texas, exclusively, none of those states, to my understanding, assess personal income taxes. They rely exclusively on sales taxes and property taxes. Were his business so concentrated, and he had misallocated - his accountants misallocated the income to Minnesota and New York - he might have come out of things being owed a net balance.
Each state is its own ultimate authority, on what it taxes and on what rates are imposed. And the best guess I have is that the GOP knew that something might be amiss because it is a morass to have 50 separate taxation schemata to contend with; and it is the GOP types that have to deal with this on a more frequent basis, because they are the wealthy and super-wealthy, coexisting among the rest of us.
It is all a tempest in a teapot. A Brodkorbian excursion into the irrelevant, (which is not an entirely infrequent occurence). But bottom line, it harms the candidacy of Al Franken, and it does that unfairly unless the reporting is purposefully and scrupulously fair and balanced - something less often delivered than promised - fair and balanced reporting.
You may ask yourself --- Do the Colemans, their corporate retinue and affiliates for their BLO and GO profit-seeking effort, collect and pay sales tax properly to the last penny for the various states from which persons order and buy their item?
Who cares?
THE POINT IS: This is a diversion from real issues - where the GOP consistently is weak and alien from basic credibility. STRIB beating that horse for the GOP allows Coleman the diversionary opportunity to foster an appearance of further distancing himself from the adminstration he's been largely in lock-step with for years, but which now weighs against his chances the more it appears that Norm is little else than George Bush's butler.
It is a STRIB diversion from whether Al Franken or Jack Nelson Pallmeyer are better men, better fit for office in the Senate, than the present incumbent.
That is the only thing that is at issue. Fitness for office. Trustworthiness and human heart, head and passions. Jack's on track. Al's on track. Norm's playing around with the third rail, BLO and GO factored in, or left out of the equation.
Al and Jack are better people.
It's clearly opinion, judgment, and that assessment will not be agreed with by those who like and will vote for Norm. But it's how I read things. It's my right to hold and express such opinions. So I do.
All else beyond who's best for the job - Jack in my opinion, then Al, and so far outdistanced as to not be a viable option, there is Norm - all else beyond that "on balancewho's best" voter choice drifts into vain GOP effort to disctact people from the core truths - the main truth being that it's time to retire Norm Coleman from the Senate. It's overdue.
