http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/10/07/demint/
Tax cheat
In a down-to-the-wire Senate race in South Carolina, right-winger Jim DeMint is running on major tax reform. Yet he fails to pay his own taxes on time and has been slapped with liens by the IRS.
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By Joe Conason
Oct. 7, 2004 | Among this year's Republican Senate hopefuls, Jim DeMint of South Carolina is surely the most eager promoter of right-wing economic orthodoxy. With the zeal of a true believer, the House member from Greenville has declared that America's future depends on privatizing Social Security and abolishing the federal minimum wage.
Now his unlikely notion of "tax reform" -- scrapping the income tax and substituting a 23 percent national sales tax -- has become the central issue in his race against Democrat Inez Tenenbaum. (The president endorsed DeMint at a campaign rally last August, causing a brief uproar before the White House disavowed the candidate's ill-advised remarks.)
While DeMint's enthusiasm for such conservative nostrums has drawn support from Republican financiers on Wall Street and in Washington -- as well as rave reviews from the Wall Street Journal editorial page -- the potential consequences of his policies for average taxpayers have alarmed South Carolina voters of all political persuasions. Even many conservative economists tend to regard the national sales tax as an unworkable idea whose time should never come.
While DeMint dreams of imposing a national sales tax, he also likes to imagine abolishing the Internal Revenue Service. Many politicians claim to hate the IRS, of course, but DeMint's difficulties with federal, state and local tax authorities may lend a personal edge to his animosity.
South Carolina court records obtained by Salon show that from 1987 until as recently as 2001, DeMint has repeatedly failed to pay his taxes on time, forcing the Internal Revenue Service and the South Carolina Tax Commission to file liens against him and his company, DeMint Marketing Management. In some cases, despite numerous warnings, DeMint has delayed payment for years. If he harbors a special hostility toward the IRS, that might reflect the $1,050 lien in 1987 for overdue taxes against him and his company -- which he neglected to pay for more than three years.
In 2001, DeMint's tax troubles briefly became a public issue in his hometown. Although he boasts of having "never voted for a tax increase" during his three terms in Congress, DeMint endorsed a local property tax increase in Greenville, whose public schools desperately needed additional funds.