I am sure at times my blogs seem to long for those who want the story in two sentences or less. I hope you stay with this. This past winter of 2008 my wife was notified that she was being audited by the Kansas Department of Revenue. When you get a letter such as this your first reaction is; what did I do wrong? Knowing that my wife is not a tax cheat she began the process of gathering the paperwork the state requested. The first request was for two years of supposed missing tax returns around 2003 and 2004. This information was provided to the "Revenue Agent" and all seemed well. I asked my wife to stay on top of this issue. I am not sure if we missed another letter from the state but about December we were served a warrant for back taxes of $12,500.00 dollars. Needless to say this got our attention. At the same time this seemed pretty amusing to us since my wife only made about $25,000.00 dollars during any one of the years of interest. We were not married then and she was single with two high school students living at home. Sometime in January 2009 I got a phone call from a very nice lady at Capital Federal Savings trying to track down my wife to let her know that the Kansas Revenue Agent just faxed them a letter to freeze our checking account. She warned us that if we had outstanding checks or payments they would bounce unless we quickly put additional cash into our checking account. We were effectively locked out of our bank account the moment the bank receives the fax. The bank is required to wire this money to Topeka at the end of the day that the actual certified notice reaches them by mail. In a panic my wife called the revenue agent again and he told her that he needed two more years of taxes that the state seemed to have misplaced. To make a long story short we complied and the revenue agent was nice enough to release our checking account before the funds were sent. He grabbed $250.00 for his trouble however. After reviewing 4 years of taxes on a single woman with two children still living at home making maybe $25,000.00 a year working for SRS, the revenue agent found an error my wife made on her KAPERS in one of the returns.
Final back taxes owed with interest and penalty was $91.00. We were given no explanation for why the Department of Revenue seemed to have misplaced four years of tax returns.
Now for our governor. Please read on. Put yourself in our shoes and think about where I am going with this. The media in Kansas and Washington DC want you to believe that the tax problems of our Governor and HHS nominee is just a simple mistake that we should overlook during her senate nomination hearings coming in the next week or so. My point of view is this. There was no innocent mistake at all. Kansans may not be aware of the fact that Governor Kathleen Sebelius has been nominated by President Obama to be the next Health and Human Services Director. This is a cabinet post which means this is a political appointment and answers directly to the president. The Kansas Governor like all nominations had to turn over her tax returns for review. After all the president doesn't want a tax cheat working for him. It seems she made a few innocent mistakes on her tax return and her confirmation hearings in the United States Senate has been delayed. Governor Sebelius took $7,000.00 in deductions she wasn't entitled to. Sebelius and the Obama Adminstration wants us to believe that her mistakes were innocent. Sebelius took deductions that even a bad accountant would have know better. Unlike myself and thousands of others threatened by the Revenue Department of Kansas, Governor Sebelius errors would have never been reviewed had it not been for the fact that she, in her own words had to scrub her tax returns in order to get through the confirmation hearings. Governor Sebelius is one of many appointments by this president who has cheated on their taxes. It is amazing how these politicians who want to raise our taxes cheat on their own. But for them it was Turbo Tax that made the mistake and they had no idea. But for any other citizen of Kansas it means a tax warrant and a letter to your bank to cleaning out our checking and savings accounts.
The most amazing thing about events such as the Governors simple tax mistake is the number of Kansans who don't care. After all it was just $7,000 dollars and the governor is only human. I for one don't buy it. For those who don't care and see this as just a simple human mistake be clear about one thing. If you make that same simple error, I assure you that nobody in the Kansas Department of Revenue will consider you human.
