Senator Mark Udall’s (D, Colorado) campaign revealed to have a tax lien.

It must be nice to never have to worry about following the rules and regulations that one has imposed on the rest of us. Case in point: Colorado Democrat Sen. Mark Udall’s failure to pay unemployment insurance tax. Not the stupidest thing that a Democratic Senator has ever done, but it’s dang sloppy: as Colorado Peak Politics notes, “You’d think a campaign as well funded as liberal U.S. Senator Mark Udall’s could afford a compliance guy.”

You’d think.

IRS puts tax lien on Kerry’s 2004 campaign.

(Via NTCNews‘ sidebar) Good luck with getting that resolved, Senator:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service has filed a $819,848 tax lien against Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, but Kerry on Wednesday blamed an IRS clerical error for the claim and said his campaign owes no tax penalties.

The Massachusetts Democrat said the IRS mishandled payroll tax forms that he said were correctly filed by his campaign in 2005.

Apparently the junior Senator from Massachusetts is finding it impossible to make the IRS see reason on this issue. For the record, I believe him; there’s precisely the “But we jumped through those hoops already” puzzled/confused/warily exasperated tone coming from his staff that one associates with dealing with a government bureaucracy with the bit in its teeth. The truly interesting part? Usually a Senator has enough power to get an honest-to-God mistake rectified; which might say something about the validity of Kerry’s case, but probably says rather more of the Senator’s influence.

I would like to think of this as a teachable moment for Senator Kerry about various aspects of our tax code: only, well…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.