by Patrick Gleason
Thanks to the presidential pardon from his father, Hunter Biden will no longer have to worry about the federal charges he was facing for failure to pay federal income tax on millions of dollars in earnings. President Joe Biden’s December 1 pardon does not, however, immunize his son from prosecution for failure to pay state income tax. Whether or not Hunter Biden fulfilled his state tax obligations to California is a question now being pursued by a public whistleblower.
Hunter Biden was a resident of California, home to the highest top marginal income tax rate in the country at 13.3%, during the years for which he has pled guilty to federal tax evasion. While media coverage has focused on unmet obligations to the IRS, the prospect of unpaid state tax liabilities is a topic that has never received much attention. In early December, James Lacy, president of the United States Justice Foundation, filed a public complaint (Case Number 12024-14638) with the California State Auditor calling for an investigation of the California Franchise Tax Board in order to determine whether Hunter Biden filed and paid state taxes for the years he has pled guilty to federal tax evasion.
Given the amount of income on which Hunter Biden failed to pay federal taxes, it’s a potentially large sum of money that he also might have neglected to pay to the government of California, a Democrat-run state where taxpayers are on the hook for an estimated trillion dollars-worth of unfunded public pension liabilities and where employers were recently hit with a payroll tax hike triggered by Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D-Calif.) decision to not repay unemployment insurance loans taken out from the federal government during the pandemic.
“Californians who file their tax returns and timely pay their taxes deserve to know whether or not Hunter Biden has received any special treatment from the Franchise Tax Board regarding his tax liability,” said Lacy. “I am hoping my Whistleblower Complaint will draw attention to this issue and bring some transparency to whether our state tax system has acted fairly.”
“If Hunter Biden failed to pay federal taxes, it’s reasonable to suspect he also failed to pay applicable state income taxes for those years,” says Ryan Ellis, an IRS-enrolled agent. Lacy also called on the Governor to act, saying “Newsom should also reveal to California taxpayers whether or not Hunter Biden was secretly ‘pardoned’ from state tax liability and enforcement as well.”
