St. Pete City Council candidate Will Newton is answering questions about more than $32,000 in back taxes he owed several years ago. Newton was assessed two liens stemming from 2004-2006 and 2007-2009.
Both liens were paid off in 2012.
In a Tampa Bay Times article highlighting the issue, Newton wouldn’t answer where the back taxes came from. According to the Internal Revenue Service, the back taxes resulted from “small business/self-employed.”
The Times reported that neither Newton’s work as a firefighter and EMT with the St. Petersburg Fire Department nor his work for the local firefighter’s union seemed to fit and speculated that there may have been a failed business under Newton’s belt.
Newton’s campaign refuted that Friday morning.
“As stated to the Times, during the years in question, Will did not have a business. He received a W-2 from the City and a 1099 for his work with the firefighters’ association,” campaign manager Steve Lapinski wrote in a statement. “Shortly after Will’s dispute was resolved, he paid the balance in full.”
The 1099 employment means Newton served the union as a self-employed individual and had to file taxes accordingly. When individuals are self-employed there are no taxes deducted from paychecks and instead taxes are paid when income taxes are filed with the IRS.
The news comes as tensions continue to flare between Newton and his opponent Lisa Wheeler-Brown. In a statement to the Times Newton deflected the back tax issue by instead drawing attention to more immediate controversy surrounding Wheeler-Brown.
“There was a disagreement about a tax issue years ago. Once resolved, it was paid in full. This stand[s] in stark contrast to my opponent taking donor money under false pretenses, diverting it for her own personal use, lying to voters on her campaign finance reports for over five months and attempting a cover up,” Newton wrote in a text message to Times reporter Charlie Frago.
Newton was referring to a $500 campaign expense in February used for personal dental work. That expense went misreported as office space until it was corrected last month. Wheeler-Brown also failed to initially report in-kind contributions for office space. Her campaign blamed Wheeler-Brown’s former campaign consultant for giving bad advice, but then later acknowledged the mistakes were made after he was no longer working for the campaign.
This also isn’t the first time a St. Pete City Council candidate has had past IRS troubles thrust into the limelight.
In his 2011 campaign, City Council chair Charlie Gerdes was criticized for not paying more than $22,000 in taxes owed on a 2009 income tax filing. At the time of his campaign, Gerdes was paying $450 a month to the IRS to pay off the debt.
Gerdes cruised to an easy win and is expected to win re-election handily this year.
