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US congressman admits mistake with vacation villa
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-11 10:15

WASHINGTON -- The head of the House of Representatives' tax-writing committee admitted that he owes about $5,000 in taxes for failing to report income on his returns.

But Rep. Charles Rangel, a Democrat from New York, asked colleagues to let the ethics committee investigate and urged Republicans to stop trying to have him removed from his post.

As House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Rangel has a powerful say over tax law changes. By his own admission, he has no excuse for not reporting years worth of rental income on a beach vacation property he owns in the Dominican Republic.

"Mistakes. We all make 'em. We all have to say we're sorry, but we all don't have to attack each other," Rangel said.

Rangel admitted embarrassing mistakes in his personal finances but insisted they were innocent errors of omission, rather than acts of deliberate deception or greed. Those errors, he said, would be corrected in amended filings to both the Internal Revenue Service, the US tax agency, and the Congress.

Rangel's total back-tax bill will likely be something approaching $10,000, after factoring in state and local levies, his lawyer said.

The 78-year-old Rangel maintained that over the course of two decades, he simply did not know the details of his mortgage on the beach property, how much rent he received from it or that the rent should have been reported. He blamed the confusion in part on language and cultural barriers with the operators of the resort.

Republicans are trying to use Rangel's mistakes to show that Democrats cannot claim higher moral ground on issues of ethics and corruption. The spokesman for the House Republican campaign committee, Ken Spain, said Rangel should "go on a permanent vacation and trade his powerful committee chair in for his favorite lounge chair on the beach."

The ethics panel is examining Rangel's unusual deal for the beach villa.