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It’s tax season, and who doesn’t dislike filing their taxes?
It takes time away from things like checking on the latest Husker football recruit or seeing what new fight we’re having with Canada. And it’s a messy, mathematic-heavy task, requiring a lot of wading through regulations.
But there’s one thing I detest more, and that’s when people don’t pay their taxes, unlike you and me.
If I gotta pay, I reason, so should everyone else. On the federal level, it’s estimated that nearly $600 billion a year in taxes go unpaid or are paid late. That’s according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a group founded by a Nebraska native (born in Kearney) who worked for President Nixon and co-founded the highly successful investment management firm, The Blackstone Group.
Peterson was concerned about the economic and fiscal future of America and figured, rightly so, that if everyone paid their taxes, the country would be better off. If everyone paid, maybe we’d all have to pay a little less, too.
Nebraska got concerned about delinquent taxes back during the Great Recession that started in 2007. Tax revenue was short, so they were shaking the pillows for spare change.
State lawmakers passed a law creating a “wall of shame.” The wall, which posted on the Nebraska Department of Revenue’s website, lists the state’s top 25 tax scofflaws, those who owe the most taxes.
The idea was to shame people into paying up by listing their dirty, non-taxpaying laundry for all to see. At least 19 states post shame walls, including neighboring Kansas, Colorado and South Dakota.
Back in 2010, I wrote a story for the Omaha World-Herald about the state’s worst tax cheats. But apparently the state’s No. 1 tax cheat doesn’t read newspapers because, guess what, he’s still at the top of the list 15 years later.
Randall J. Thompson, a one-time Omaha businessman, topped the list in 2010, owing $2.36 million to the state in unpaid income taxes. The latest Top 25, updated on March 10, still has Randy at No. 1, owning a similar amount of taxes.
According to court records, he’s a hard guy to find and, apparently, doesn’t have the money to pay his taxes or his other debts.
Those records read like a sad country song — Thompson once sold a day-trading firm for $13 million back in 2001, according to the New York Times. But later, a federal tax judge ruled that he’d set up a sham tax shelter to avoid paying taxes on the sale.
By 2010, Thompson, who filed for bankruptcy, was the subject of about a dozen lawsuits from business associates and banks seeking payment of debts and loans.
In one lawsuit, he was ordered to pay $12.4 million to Wells Fargo Bank. The judgment went unpaid and, according to court records, was renewed in 2020.
The shame wall as well as the most recent court records lists Thompson’s address as 3855 S.179th Terrace. But my story 15 years ago indicated that he’d been evicted from a luxury, rental home in that area. Other court documents list Thompson at various other Omaha addresses.
Back in 2010, the then-State Tax Commissioner, Doug Ewald, said that the state tries to collect unpaid taxes by garnishing wages and tapping into bank accounts. But if someone has neither, it’s hard to collect, he said. Do these Walls of Shame work? Back in 2010, Ewald said that a couple of tax scofflaws paid up so that their name would not be listed on the initial wall of shame. Meanwhile, the total amount of delinquent taxes keeps rising, from $14 million in 2010 to $59.7 million in fiscal year 202324.
A Revenue Department spokesman, however, points out that total tax collections are also rising, leaving only 0.61% of all taxes delinquent in ‘23-24. Thus more than 99% of folks do pay.
I guess that accounts for just about everyone, except Randall Thompson, wherever he is.
Paul Hammel has covered state government and the state for decades. He retired in April from the Nebraska Examiner. He was previously with the Omaha World-Herald, Lincoln Journal Star and Omaha Sun.
