Rangel Failed to Report $75,000 in Income
Representative Charles B. Rangel has earned more than $75,000 in rental income from a villa he has owned in the Dominican Republic since 1988, but never reported it on his federal or state tax returns, according to a lawyer for the congressman and documents from the resort.
Representative Charles B. Rangel said through his lawyer that he did not know that he had to report the rent he received on the villa as income.
Mr. Rangel’s three-bedroom villa at the Punta Cana Resort and Club in the Dominican Republic.
Readers' Comments
Share your thoughts on this article.
Mr. Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes the federal tax code, bought the beachfront villa at the Punta Cana Yacht Club and has received twice-yearly payments from the resort, which rents the property for $500 or more per night.
Records from the development, now called the Punta Cana Resort and Club, indicated that Mr. Rangel’s rental profits varied from year to year, from $2,700 in 2004 to $7,600 in 1994.
A lawyer for Mr. Rangel, Lanny Davis, said on Thursday that the congressman would most likely file amendments to his tax returns for the years in question.
Mr. Davis said Mr. Rangel’s accountant believed he would most likely owe back taxes to the state and New York City.
But Mr. Rangel will probably have no federal tax liability, Mr. Davis said, because he considered the villa an investment rather than a vacation home, and was therefore entitled to deduct depreciation on the property, as well as taxes the resort management paid to the Dominican Republic.
Mr. Davis declined to release copies of the congressman’s tax returns and said he was gathering documents showing how often Mr. Rangel stayed at the home during the past two decades, a critical question because the Internal Revenue Service does not allow a property owner to deduct as much depreciation on a second home that the owner uses more than 14 days per year.
Mr. Davis said the congressman did not realize he had to declare the money as income, and was unaware of the semiannual payments from the resort because his wife, Alma, handled the family finances and conferred with their accountant, John Viardi, on tax matters.
The money was never sent to the Rangels directly, according to Mr. Davis and resort records, but was used to defray the mortgage the company gave them when they bought the villa and $23,000 in subsequent construction costs in 2003.
The confusion was magnified, Mr. Davis said, by the fact that the statements from the resort were sent only intermittently. The congressman declined to be interviewed, but issued a brief written statement.
“I have asked my accountant to review all the data recently made available to me by the Punta Cana Hotel in the Dominican Republic concerning my investment 20 or so years ago in purchasing a unit in that hotel for occasional use over the years,” the statement said. “Once my accountant obtains and verifies the facts, I will follow his recommendations.”
Mr. Davis said that Mr. Rangel had paid scant attention to the villa’s finances until Sunday, when The New York Post reported that the congressman had failed to declare the rental income for 2006 and 2007 on his Congressional financial disclosure forms. “This is all news to him,” Mr. Davis said. A review by The New York Times of the records dating back to 1996 showed that the congressman also did not report the income in 1996 through 2000. Mr. Davis said on Thursday that Mr. Rangel would most likely file amendments to the disclosure forms as well.
The disclosure is a sworn statement, and intentionally filing a false report is a felony that carries a possible five-year prison sentence, but in most cases the House ethics committee does not punish members for errors or omissions.
New York State law classifies filing a false city or state tax return a felony punishable by up to four years in prison, but Kathleen M. Pakenham, a tax lawyer at the law firm of White & Case, said criminal prosecutions are rare and in most cases, the taxpayer is simply fined 20 percent of the back taxes owed. Under federal law it is a felony to “willfully” evade payment of taxes or file a false return, and sentences can include prison terms and fines of up to $100,000. But Daniel Goldberg, a tax law professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, said that the I.R.S. rarely pursued criminal prosecution or imposed fines in cases where no back taxes were owed.
Whatever his legal exposure, the tax problems present a political embarrassment for Mr. Rangel, a Harlem Democrat who has sat on the Ways and Means Committee since 1975. As chairman, Mr. Rangel has pushed for higher taxes on the wealthy, unveiling a $1.3 trillion proposal last year that businesses denounced as a threat to the economy.
His finances have been under scrutiny since July, after news reports that a major real estate developer had allowed him to lease four rent-stabilized apartments, including one he had used as a campaign office. Mr. Rangel announced he would give up the campaign office, but keep the other three, and asked the House ethics committee to investigate whether the landlord’s decision to charge him below-market rent should be restricted under the Congressional gift ban.
In his memoir, “And I Haven’t Had a Bad Day Since,” Mr. Rangel described his deep affection for the Dominican retreat.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario