Bizarro World: Tax Cheat Rangel Seeks to Punish Tax Cheats

If you needed any further evidence how crooked and corrupt these liberal Democrats are, look no further than the outrageous chutzpah of New York's Charles Rangel. The man is neck deep in tax woes, recently "discovered" millions in unreported income and now has the audacity to sneakily slip new legal punishments into the proposed ObamaCare health bill.

Even as he fends off accusations about his own failure to pay taxes and fully disclose his financial dealings, Rep. Charles Rangel had quietly slipped into the health-care bill broad new provisions cracking down on taxpayers in proceedings with the IRS, The Post has learned.

The changes approved by the House Ways and Means Committee that Rangel chairs would strip away legal defenses and pile higher penalties on corporate and individual taxpayers facing IRS proceedings for what they claim are unintentional mistakes, experts said.

Rangel's bill would:

* Punish those who fail to alert the IRS to potentially questionable tax exemptions.

* Bar the IRS from waiving penalties against taxpayers who clearly erred in good faith.

* Double fines in certain circumstances.

"The bill raises penalties and eliminates many of the reasonable defenses that taxpayers have always been able to use when honest mistakes are uncovered," one lawyer told The Post.

In fact, the bill increases fines "in some cases even for honest mistakes," the expert added.

Republicans yesterday ripped Rangel's attempt to go after taxpayers, given his own failure to pay taxes on rental income from his villa in the Dominican Republic and his extensive reporting problems with his financial-disclosure statements to Congress.

"It is highly ironic that Chairman Rangel continues to work to crack down on American taxpayers who make honest mistakes on their tax forms when he himself has failed to pay his own staggering tax bills," said Michael Steel, spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

"Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi should force him to step aside as chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee until this baffling array of allegations are resolved."

In addition to $75,000 in rental income he failed to report to the IRS a few years ago, Rangel recently filed new papers revealing he neglected to disclose to Congress more than $1.3 million in income and $3 million in business deals between 2002 and 2006.

The Post reported last week that he also failed to pay taxes on property in New Jersey that he neglected for years to disclose he owned.

His office maintains he is now up to date on all his taxes.

I guess we're supposed to believe him.

Yo know it's time to go when even the ultra-liberal editorial pages are calling for his dismissal.

This bum could be dead ten years and he'd still be voted back into office, although if the GOP is wise he's going to be the poster boy for all things corrupt as we roll into the 2010 midterms.

Of course any ad that features him will be called racist, but we've come to expect that weak defense.

Update: Byron York thinks the clock is ticking on this thug. Let's hope the Democrats are concerned about criminals in their midst.