Democrat Invents Best Excuse Ever for Not Paying Taxes: 'Non-Filer Syndrome'

Let's see you or I try this one and see how fast we wind up in jail. But since this guy is the chief of staff to New York Governor David Paterson, it'll probably just spawn a legion of people now suffering from non-filers syndrome.

Unreal.

We'll bet even the IRS hasn't heard this one yet.

Gov. Paterson's chief of staff now says he owed nearly $300,000 in back taxes, $100,000 more than was previously known - and his lawyer blamed the problem on "non-filer syndrome."

Charles O'Byrne's attorney, Richard Kestenbaum, mentioned the virtually unheard-of ailment at a briefing for reporters intended to quell the firestorm surrounding O'Byrne's failure to file income-tax returns from 2001 to 2005.

O'Byrne, 49, a former Jesuit priest with close ties to the Kennedy family, has already blamed his neglect to file - first reported by The Post - on clinical depression.

Kestenbaum said yesterday O'Byrne also had "non-filer syndrome."

"Many times, that syndrome causes them not to be able to file their tax returns," he explained.

Rhondalee Dean-Royce, a spokeswoman for the American Psychiatric Association, said there is no such disorder or syndrome in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a standard reference.

Plenty of professionals don't file because they're too busy or too depressed or because of a family tragedy, said IRS spokesman Larry Wright. But he's never heard of non-filer syndrome.

Other tax experts found the concept ridiculous.

"Yes, it's quite common," one Manhattan accountant joked. "A hundred percent of my clients suffer from this syndrome, and it gets especially bad every year as April 15th approaches."

Paterson spokeswoman Marissa Shorenstein later played down Kestenbaum's diagnosis.

"The lawyer was referring generally to a condition he has had experience with, both in private practice and while he worked at the IRS, called 'late-filers syndrome.' Charles O'Byrne has never been diagnosed with that syndrome," she said.

The "syndrome" claim came five days after The Post first reported that O'Byrne - who earns $178,500 a year - recently repaid some $200,000 in back taxes, penalties and fees to state and federal tax authorities.

Yesterday, O'Byrne's attorneys revealed his debt had actually reached $292,780.

Since according to Joe Biden paying taxes is the new patriotism, does this make O'Byrne unpatriotic?

If President Obama raises my taxes and I refuse to pay them, will that make me a conscientious objector?

Needless to say, O'Byrne is taxing credibility.

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