As a follower of all things Teresa, I was fascinated by a delicious dissection of the wacky heiress’s income tax returns on Power Line, the astute blog that came into its own with Rathergate.
As most of us with five or six houses like to do, Teresa has not chosen as her official residence the one with the highest tax rate. She is not, in fact, a resident of Massachusetts, where the tax rates are high and where the senator and family hamster Licorice reside.
You should read the whole piece, but here’s an appetizer:
“Reader and former Foley & Lardner tax partner David Lott was impressed by the low effective federal income tax rate revealed in the tax information released by Teresa Heinz this past Friday. He noticed that her state of residence had been redacted from the information and ascertained that it was Pennsylvania, a state with a far lower income tax rate than Massachusetts. He performed some online research and discovered this September 9, 1999 AP story on the subject:
“She may be his biggest supporter, but Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s wife Teresa Heinz can’t vote for him, despite owning a $3 million home in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood.
“Heinz, the ketchup conglomerate heiress, has kept her legal residence in Pennsylvania, meaning she can’t vote for her husband….”
I don’t understand why she can’t just vote for him in Pennsylvania, but the rest of the story has a moral that is very easy for Inky to understand: Some people don’t mind raising taxes for the simple reason that they are so rich that their lawyers know all the tricks in the book.