Roy Barnes acknowledged Thursday he had made errors on income tax filings – two that caused him to pay too little, and a bigger one that made him give the government more than he owed.
Barnes, the former governor and this year’s Democratic nominee, acknowledged Thursday that he had improperly claimed tax deductions in 2008 and 2009 on property he no longer owned. Without the deductions, Barnes said, he would have owed about $7,500 more in federal and state income taxes for those years – three-tenths of 1 percent more than the $2.6 million he has already paid.
The error, first reported Thursday by the Savannah Morning News, followed questions about taxes paid by Barnes’ Republican opponent, former U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal. In 2006 and 2007, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Sunday, Deal paid about $7,600 in federal income taxes – slightly less than 2 percent of his gross income of nearly $400,000.
Barnes’ tax error, Deal spokesman Brian Robinson said, showed the former governor has been “throwing stones from his glass house.”
An accountant volunteering for Deal spotted the mistake on Barnes’ 2009 federal tax return, posted on his campaign website. Barnes reported a depreciation expense of $9,091 on a rental house he claimed to own in Marietta. Actually, Barnes and his wife, Marie, had given the house to their daughter and son-in-law in 2007. Barnes owns other property on the same street.
After learning of the error on the 2009 return, Barnes’ accountant also discovered he had claimed the same deduction on the property for 2008, said Emil Runge, a campaign spokesman. Barnes’ campaign initially said he would pay additional taxes.
But Barnes’ accountant found another mistake: a misstatement of a $135,000 investment loss as a $34,000 gain. Barnes lost money when he sold shares of a Habersham County bank in 2008, Runge said, but his tax return inaccurately counted income.
Consequently, Barnes overpaid by about $30,000, Runge said – more than enough to offset underpayments caused by the other mistakes.
Barnes’ accountant is preparing amended returns.
Barnes and Deal have sparred for months over the public release of their tax documents. Barnes posted about 1,500 pages of documents covering 25 years on his website. Deal released tax forms — but not supplemental schedules and other forms that detail how he made and lost money and how his taxes were computed.
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