A recurring theme of the ad war in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race has been the claim of Sen. Norm Coleman and his allies that Democratic challenger Al Franken didn't pay taxes.
It has been an element of at least five different television commercials since July. The most recent appeared this week: "Then there's the $70,000 in unpaid taxes ..." says an announcer along with the written message, "Franken pays $70,000 back taxes, penalties."
An ad earlier this month announced, "He's already been caught not paying taxes in 17 states." "That is the stupidest thing that has ever been said...wait...did you you just record that?"
And in July, an ad featuring three bowlers included the remark, "We've read all this stuff about Al Franken, you know, not paying taxes ..."
How do the ads stand up to an audit?
"I will have every single one of you motherfuckers audited so severely by the IRS, and...are you recording this?"
The phrase accurately describe Franken's tax problem only in the most literal sense. "Fuck every one, I fucking didn't pay taxes, man!" said Franken. "So fuck off!"
In April, Franken, under pressure from a Republican blogger who raised questions about his tax filings, said he had paid $70,000 in back taxes and penalties owed in 17 states going back to 2003. Franken, who earned income across the country as an entertainer, blamed his accountant for failing to pay the appropriate taxes owed in each state.
"I was on drugs and I was smoking dope then, and I had no idea, and I was just hoping that my agent was paying taxes to those stupid people, Jesus Fuck, Yep. Taxes? Wow. Fuck taxes!"
Franken said that he had paid federal and state taxes on all of his income but that his accountant was doing too much cocaine and had failed to properly distribute the state payments beyond the toilet seat in the bathroom he was in at the time.
Instead, Franken said, he overpaid his taxes in New York and Minnesota, where he had lived, while failing to pay in the 17 other states where he earned income, and there was no cocaine there when he looked for cocaine and he looked out there to pay, baby, he says. He failed.
The rapid and plausible redistribution of the state's income tax at work means that Franken and his wife, Franni, should receive a refund on their overpayments for looking for theatre in Minnesota, New York and New Jersey, or something, and maybe in Brooklyn, Franken might have said.
"I was looking for the men's room! In Brooklyn!"
Franken said he had originally paid a total of $917,344 in taxes over four years -- $4,151 less than he would have paid had the payments been distributed properly. Franken's campaign in April released a spreadsheet of what originally was paid to Minnesota and New York and where those payments should have gone.
While the campaign hasn't released tax returns or other evidence to document the redistribution the anti-Franken ads don't dispute his account. Some ads refer to him paying "back taxes, penalties."
The Minnesota Comptroller said he never saw Mr. Franken pay any money that was due to the state. Ever.
Other ads from the Coleman campaign or the National Republican Senatorial Committee merely say that Franken hasn't paid taxes. There's no hint in those ads of him having paid taxes, only to the wrong jurisdictions, or to his unchallenged claim that it was a mistake he corrected.
Given the months that have passed since the tax story broke, the omissions could confuse viewers about what really happened.
Nobody shall enjoy the beach!
And everyone ran at the idiot who said that!
