Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has repeatedly been late to pay taxes on personal property items and real estate in recent years, records reviewed by NBC News showed.
Just last week, Manchin paid off nearly $700 he owed to Marion County, W.Va., in back taxes accrued over the past three years on a pontoon boat and multiple trailers. In 2020, Manchin made nearly $630 in back-tax payments to the county for taxes he owed on cars, boats and trailers from 2016, 2017 and 2018.
“Like most West Virginians, Senator Manchin has always paid every tax bill he’s received in full and any lapse in payment has been quickly rectified as soon as he has been made aware,” a Manchin spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News.
At times, the late payments, which were detailed in records stretching back to 2009, were made within days of their due date. Others were made months if not years later. In some cases they had fines or other accumulated interest payments attached to them.
“Joe Manchin voted to raise West Virginians’ taxes with the so-called Inflation Reduction Act but refuses to pay his own,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Tate Mitchell said in a statement. “Manchin is a complete hypocrite.”
Marion County Clerk Julie Kincaid, a Democrat, said the late payments were “tremendously overblown,” pointing to the small amount of money he owed.
“I’m pretty sure this is something that just has not been brought to his attention or merely slipped off the radar,” she said. “It’s probably one of those mountain out of a molehill situations. I mean, I get it, he’s very high profile.”
The tax issues came to light as Manchin potentially faces a brutal re-election campaign, though he has not yet committed to running for another term in the Senate. If he does run, he is likely to face either GOP Gov. Jim Justice or GOP Rep. Alex Mooney.
Manchin isn’t alone in having tax issues arise.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who along with his wife, journalist Connie Schultz, was late paying the tax bill on their Cleveland home seven times since purchasing it in 2013, according to documents kept by the Cuyahoga County treasurer and reviewed by NBC News earlier this year. Responding to questions from NBC News, Brown’s campaign manager Rachel Petri said the senator and Schultz had just paid a $390 penalty stemming from their most recent late payment.
Like Manchin, Brown is locked in a tough re-election battle that is a top pickup target for Republicans.
Meanwhile, soon after launching his Senate campaign in May, Justice’s coal business empire was sued by the Department of Justice, which seeks more than $5 million in unpaid environmental fines and other overdue fees. That followed an April ruling by a federal appeals court that his companies must pay $2.5 million in fines issued by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Justice’s campaign manager, Roman Stauffer, did not address the substance of the lawsuit in a statement following the Justice Department’s action, saying it had only come about because Democrats were “panicking” over the governor’s polling.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
