A Secretary of the Treasury who doesn't pay his taxes?

Our tax system is too complex if the top guy can't figure them out. Or did he just decide to keep the money if he could get away with it?

Either he is the wrong person, or our system is broken

American Thinker Blog: Geithner should not be Secretary of the Treasury:

We are asked to believe that a man of supposedly great financial sophistication couldn't understand a tax liability that tens of millions of Americans (including me) must pay every quarter.

There are other reasons to question Giethner's judgment. Jeff Gerth of Politico writes:

As president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Timothy Geithner often preached that gargantuan financial firms like Citigroup should be held to the highest regulatory standards to make sure they couldn't take on too much risk.

But when it came to supervising Citigroup in recent years, the record shows that the New York Fed eased the reins as the company blew billions on subprime mortgages and other risky deals that ultimately forced the biggest bank rescue in U.S. history. ...

Poor risk management and weak capital levels were central to Citigroup's undoing. One enforcement agreement in place before Geithner took office in 2003 - an order requiring quarterly risk reports - was lifted during his watch. A ban on major acquisitions also was eliminated a year after it had been imposed in 2005.

Afterward, in 2006 and 2007, Citigroup aggressively expanded into the subprime mortgage business and bought a hedge fund and Japanese brokerage, among other assets.

A year later, as the global financial crisis took hold, Citigroup took losses and writedowns of more than $50 billion. The New York Fed brought no public enforcement case, although examiners privately sent a critical letter to the company in the first half of 2008.

Byron York in NRO

Geithner accepted reimbursement for taxes he didn't pay.

What if I didn't pay taxes? - Roger Simon - Politico.com:

Would it be OK if I stopped paying my taxes until Barack Obama names me to be his secretary of the treasury?

That is a deal I would like to get. That is the deal financial wizard Timothy Geithner got.

He didn’t pay all of his federal taxes for years. Then, after Obama decided to name him treasury secretary, Obama’s vetting team discovered Geithner’s little oversight.

Not paying your taxes is considered serious for some people. But not for Geithner, a Wall Street “wonder boy”...

The coverup

... So in November, Team Obama announced that Geithner had this little problem and was paying his back taxes with interest and that it was all an honest mistake and no big deal, right?

Wrong. They decided to keep it a secret. But The Wall Street Journal discovered it and blew the whistle Tuesday.