Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez still owes the state of New York overdue, unpaid corporate taxes several months after promising to clear up the bill.
A company founded in 2012 by the Democratic lawmaker was issued a tax warrant in 2017 and her office responded by saying the balance would be paid right away. But six months later, the $1,618.36 bill is still outstanding, according to The Daily Caller.
The Bronx County Clerk confirmed the unpaid taxes to the Daily Caller on Monday, referring to the tax warrant issued to Brook Avenue Press, a children’s book publisher that Ocasio-Cortez launched before her Senate bid. The warrant was issued two months after the former bartender announced her candidacy against Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley in July 2017.
Following a report in March about the six-year-old tax lien, a spokesman for the freshman Democrat said that it would promptly be taken care of.
Ocasio-Cortez owes back taxes from 2012, ignored notices, but wants Americans to pay more taxes https://t.co/FWxJ1WNaz4 pic.twitter.com/oxygvJuhjs
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) March 10, 2019
“This is the first we’re hearing of it, and we won’t have any additional comment until we look into it,” Ocasio-Cortez’s spokesman, Corbin Trent, said at the time.
But two weeks after the remarks, Trent told the New York Post that lawyers for the congresswoman were looking into the matter.
“I’m her congressional staffer, not her personal accountant,” he said.
A tax warrant “is equivalent to a civil judgment against you,” according to the New York Department of Taxation and Finance. “A filed tax warrant creates a lien against your real and personal property,” and can allow the state to “seize and sell your real and personal property,” affect credit and the ability to buy or sell property as well as allow the state to “garnish your wages or other income.”
“Before we file a tax warrant, we will send you notice of the debt, and give you an opportunity to resolve it,” the Department description states.
“The company probably got numerous letters from the state and probably ignored them,” an accountant in New York City speculated in the Post story from March.
Brook Avenue Press was dissolved by New York State with a process used for companies that do not pay taxes for at least two years or fail to file tax returns.
With an annual salary of $174,000, it seems Ocasio-Cortez should not be having a problem making the payment which, according to the Bronx County Clerk, remains unpaid. The lawmaker reported her ownership of the company May in her financial disclosure report filed with the House of Representatives.
When launching her company back in 2012, the then-22-year-old Ocasio-Cortez spoke out in support of a bill proposing tax deductions for start-up costs associated with a business.
“You don’t really make a profit in your first year,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “To get taxed on top of that is a real whammy.”
But since becoming elected, the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist has called for tax rates of up to 70 percent on those at the “tippy tops” of wage earners as she pushed her radical “Green New Deal” environmental plan that would cost trillions of dollars.
She warned that not addressing the climate change issue would prove catastrophic as the earth only had about 12 years left and likened the issue to World War II.
Ocasio-Cortez says the world will end in 12 yrs without action, calls climate change Millennials’ World War II https://t.co/mgihItMNcK pic.twitter.com/v4YFhpLryU
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) January 22, 2019
And only a few months into office, Ocasio-Cortez was arguing that she deserved a $4,500 pay raise.
“It’s not even like a raise,” she said in June, calling the increase “superficial” even as Democrats voted against the idea as “bad optics.”
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Frieda@bizpacreview.com
Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.
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