Posted on 03/21/2011 10:39:25 PM PDT by NoLibZone
Any way you slice it, $287, 273 is a lot of money, especially in this economy. For one-term Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., up for re-election in 2012, that's the amount of personal property taxes she failed to pay since 2007 on a plane she and her husband, a millionaire businessman, partially owned.
"I have discovered that the...personal property taxes on the plane have not been paid," McCaskill told a small number of reporters on a conference call Monday. "There should have been a reporting to the county of the existence of this airplane...There are people I could blame for this, but I know better. As (a former) auditor, I know I should have checked for myself. I take full responsibility for the mistake." Audio of the call was sent to Fox by a McCaskill aide and can be found here.
(Excerpt) Read more at politics.blogs.foxnews.com ...
$87,000 my ass....flight time for crew and fuel on an eight seat jet is over $2500 per hour! My calcs put her reimbursement at a minimum for those 87 flights at $217,500 if all the flight’s were one hour which is highly unlikely....more likely figure an average of 3.0 hrs per flight for a total of $650,000 or more! If anyone knows the tail number I can tell you exactly what the costs are....
Bump
When this first came out, it was $87, 273 in unpaid taxes.
Now, it’s $287,273.
How did that happen?
The personal property tax on an airplane is based on it’s purchase price, not how much income it generates.
And the pp tax relates to my post how? They are separate issues taxes and amount she owed for flying on the plane....
I’m confused....the article clearly references “personal property tax”.
The article I read said she had reimbursed the government $89,000 that she erroneously charged the taxpayers for flights she took on the jet for her campaign. My post was meant to question that figure. It costs more than $1000 an hour to fly an eight place jet, so I guess in some respects she was “saving” taxpayers alot per but the thing all stinks for me. Once you fudge numbers in one spot you fudge them all over...
Your post 21 was a response to post 4, where that poster referred to TAXES.
Do you see why I thought that you were mixing up taxes and flight cost?
To be a little more clear, (or less), The original claim was that she hadn’t paid $87,000 in PP Tax. Now it’s $300,000?
And you are quoting 300,000 and higher for flight costs.
So, I would like to know, which one of the ‘costs’ or UNPAID items are we discussing? The story is about UNPAID TAXES.
If she OWNS the plane (co-owns), why would she even be charging the government for the costs?
You need to carefully READ and COMPREHEND the entire article. The $300k was for clearly cited for back taxes. The $89k was money she erroneously charged the taxpayers to cover flights costs of 89 flights she took on her hubbies jet which she supposedly has reimbursed to the taxpayers . The point of my posts was that flights costs for an eight seat jet are no where near $1000 per flight hour and that something smells with the math in the story.
I have heard of a bunch of other cases where politicians hitch rides on private jets and "reimburse" the owner $1000 per flight. Apparently there is a law that says that congresspersons must reimburse the owners of private planes, but somehow limits the reimbursement to $1000. (I don't know the details of how much of this comes from a congressional travel allowance.) So the plane owner gets to bribe the politician with a discounted flight on a private jet and the politician saves time and money. The difference in this case is that McCaskill was making the payment to her own family.
I did. I also read all the other articles on this subject. The first one referred to $87,000 in UNPAID PROPERTY TAXES. It seems to me the media may be mixing up the figures as well.
and that something smells with the math in the story.
I think we completely agree on that.
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