Martha McSally is stiffing Uncle Sam and her campaign staff. Will you be next?
Opinion: Avoiding taxes doesn't seem like a good idea for someone who is paid by taxpayers.
EJ Montini
A report in Arizona's Politics has found that Republican senate candidate Martha McSally has decided that her top campaign staff are not really employees, but independent contractors, and is therefore avoiding paying payroll taxes, Social Security and Medicare withholding, unemployment taxes and benefits.
Arizona's Politics said it reviewed McSally’s most recent federal campaign filing and found that “McSally has 13 people receiving monthly payments ranging from between $1,445 and $7,000, and at least that many receiving smaller bi-weekly payments. All of them list ‘field consulting’ in the subject line. There are no payments made for taxes,’ ‘payroll,’ ‘health insurance,’ etc.”
Is avoiding taxes good for a candidate?
That would make her the only candidate among the top 20 spending candidates for senate, Democrat or Republican, to do this.
As for her opponent, Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona's Politics reports:
“Sinema's most recent campaign report indicates a payroll of more than $90,000 per month, with withheld taxes/Social Security/Medicare/workers comp/etc totaling more than $36,000 per month."
If she treats Uncle Sam this way...
We can’t be sure how much money McSally saves and is able to pump back into her campaign by avoiding taxes and labeling top staff as independent consultants.
But it doesn’t seem right for a politician who lives off the taxpayers to be avoiding taxes, does it?
And if McSally is willing to treat Uncle Sam and her own staff like this, what can you expect from her when Congress is considering whether to cut YOUR funding for programs like Social Security, Medicare and so on?
MORE BY MONTINI: