Why yes, Dorthy, self-employed people do pay estimated quarterly taxes …
The brouhaha started when Drudge tweeted, “Just paid the Obamacare penalty for not ‘getting covered’… I’M CALLING IT A LIBERTY TAX.”
Jesse Lee, the Director of Progressive Media at Barack Obama’s White House, responded that that was a “Flat lie, no fee for previous year,” adding, “Scary how much influence he once had.”
Lee’s response to Drudge set off a firestorm in the liberal media, with many mainstream media and left-wing reporters countering him on Twitter and in their own articles to claim he does not have to pay Obamacare’s Individual Mandate tax until next year. The individual mandate went into effect Jan. 1 of this year, and most people paying their taxes right now are paying taxes for 2013.
“Dude, there’s no penalty until next yr,” Sahil Kapur of the leftwing Talking Points Memo tweeted.
Kapur’s colleague at TPM Dylan Scott wrote a full story with a headline alleging Drudge was “probably lying.”
“Americans don’t pay a penalty for not having health insurance until they file their 2014 taxes — in 2015,” Scott wrote. “So either Drudge is lying or he paid a huge penalty a year earlier than he needed to.”
“Penalty isn’t collected until 2015,” Sam Baker of National Journal tweeted at Drudge.
The Huffington Post’s Jeffrey Young wrote a full article in which he described Drudge’s tweet as “weird” and a “little head-scratching” because the Obamacare tax does not kick in until the 2014 tax year.
Drudge indicated in his followup tweets that since he is self-employed as the proprietor of The Drudge Report, he files as a small business. According to the IRS’s website for self-employed individuals, they are required to pay taxes quarterly. […]
“It is true that thousands of small businesses will be forced to pay Obamacare taxes quarterly in 2014,” a Senate Budget Committee aide told Breitbart News on Friday afternoon.
It isn’t just that they’re wrong, as Reagan pointed out — it’s that they’re rabidly certain of so much that just isn’t so.
ot but this too is good
THE WASHINGTON POST RESPONDS TO ME, AND I REPLY TO THE POST
I expect the different-ness to become greater and more public as the year goes on.
When you think you’re right because of *who you are*, and someone else is wrong because of *who they are*, then you will appear irrational to other people.
Unfortunately, you won’t care about that, because they’re wrong because of *who they are*.
Man, what a kookoobananas world it is, especially if you watch the MFM.
Also I don’t think Elperin or the Post are actually embarrassed by being exposed as crassly political liars. If they could be, they would have been long ago.
They *have* to live in an intellectual bubble, or they couldn’t maintain their behavior. It’s like the psychological inverse of “that which cannot continue will not.”
The reaction to Drudge is not unusual, given that those on Left, especially those in the Media have never owned a business nor known anyone who does. I cannot count the times I’ve been told that my own experience as a business owner is “wrong,” because they “heard on NPR” that such things don’t/won’t happen. All things are possible when you willfully maintain your ignorance.
There is one sure way to hammer the “I’m too politically hidebound to breathe” bunch.
Drudge should challenge every one of the MF’s to pay a portion of his “non-existant” tax bill or STFU. If they continue to lie and refuse to pay up he should run a daily post on each one of them by name and org. until they pay or print a retraction/apology/correction.