Hypocrisy: Ocasio-Cortez Calls for Tax Hikes While Her Own Company Owes Gov't Big Chunk of Cash
For Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the bad tax news keeps coming.
It only made the Democratic “It” girl look foolish when news broke that her own mother had forsaken New York state for the sunnier climes of Florida – rather than pay the Empire State’s higher taxes.
Now, it looks like Ocasio-Cortez has a problem paying New York state taxes herself.
According to the New York Post, a now-defunct company Ocasio-Cortez founded in 2012 still owes almost $2,000 in corporate taxes, even though it’s no longer in business.
The company was called Brook Avenue Press, the Post reported, and like so much of what comes out of Ocasio-Cortez’s mouth these days, it was founded with what sounded like the noblest intentions.
It was set up to “develop and identify stories and literature in urban areas like New York, specifically communities like the Bronx,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a YouTube video introducing the company.
Check out the bubbly then-22-year-old here:
Followers of the Ocasio-Cortez phenomenon probably won’t be surprised, but the venture apparently didn’t work out quite as well as it was envisioned.
The Post was unable to find any books that were actually published by Brook Avenue Press, and it apparently wasn’t keeping its own books very well either.
According to the Post, the state dissolved the company in 2016, which the newspaper reported can happen when a business fails to pay taxes or file a return.
In July 2017, shortly after Ocasio-Cortez announced she was challenging incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary, the company was hit was with a warrant for unpaid taxes totaling $1,870.36, according to the Post.
The Post reported that the state’s Tax Department doesn’t comment on individual cases, but the article noted that filing a warrant against a business is typically a move of “last resort.”
An Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent told the Post it was all news to him.
“This is the first we’re hearing of it, and we won’t have any additional comment until we look into it,” he said Saturday, according to the report.
Regardless of the details of the case, there are a few takeaways here that are pretty important.
Ocasio-Cortez built a political campaign, and is building a national movement, on the idea that government seizure of wealth in the form of taxation is necessary for the country to achieve its potential.
But Ocasio-Cortez herself appears unable, or unwilling, to pay even the minimal taxes required to keep a two-bit independent publishing business in good graces with the state taxing authorities.
(According to the Post report, New York’s corporate tax rate is based on a sliding scale, with the minimum payment being $25. Considering the bill for AOC’s press is less than $2,000, we’re not talking the world of high finance here.)
And the company Ocasio-Cortez pushed to “develop and identify stories and literature” for the communities Democrats like to pretend to champion apparently ended up producing exactly zero books that told those stories or shared that literature.
And yet, this is the woman who continually calls for tax hikes, the elected official Democrats are holding up as a champion of the Green New Deal? (Though thanks to previous Post reporting, we know her hypocrisy on that score.)
This is the woman leftists trust to be the spearhead of a movement to radically transform the economy and governing structure of the greatest nation the world has ever known?
For AOC, the tax news keeps getting worse.
Conservatives need to stop her agenda before the same happens to the rest of America.
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