Joe the Plumber

[Arthur Rubin]

I'm trying to provide some balance to the Wikipedia article.

Is it possible or likely that he wasn't aware of the state (Ohio) income tax lien, as the deputy clerk stated.

Is it possible that he wasn't aware that he owed state income tax.

Is there some other evidence that he might be a tax protester, which would certainly be relevant for the article.

Is the lien really for state income tax, or is it for property tax, as some sources have stated.

The article is locked for a few days because of the dispute as to whether the lien should be in the article, to give context to his "Boston Tea Party" quote.

Feel free to move this to another forum if you can find an appropriate one.

[Mr. Mephistopheles]

I'll take state income tax for $500, Alex.

That answers one of your questions.

edit: This might explain why Joe isn't licensed; because he's apparently he doesn't meet the qualifications.

An official at Local 50 of the plumber’s union, based in Toledo, said Mr. Wurzelbacher does not hold a license. He also has never served an apprenticeship and does not belong to the union.

...

Unlike some other states, Ohio does not have a formal statewide licensing system for plumbers. But the city of Toledo and other municipalities do, Mr. Joseph said, and Mr. Wurzelbacher has not met those requirements.

“All contractors are licensed, and he does not have a license, either as a contractor or a plumber,” the union official said, citing a search of government records. “I can’t find that he’s ever even applied for any kind of apprenticeship, and he has never belonged to local 189 in Columbus, which is what he claims on his Facebook page.”

You can read the whole article here. Poor guy, all he did was ask a simple uninformed question and he gets caught up in the media web.

[Demosthenes]

Is there some other evidence that he might be a tax protester, which would certainly be relevant for the article.

I poked around for about five minutes on this issue but got distratced on something else. Joe was originally registered with the Natural Law Party but changed to Republican (my theory is he's a Ron Paul follower.) I'll look around later today and see if there's more.

[The Observer]

Is it possible or likely that he wasn't aware of the state (Ohio) income tax lien, as the deputy clerk stated.

It's possible - anyone could be oblivious to what is being filed. But typically taxing agenices have a notification process where correspondence is mailed notifying the taxpayer of the unpaid taxes, that a lien notice will be recorded. If the agency lacks a current address for the taxpayer, then there is a good chance the taxpayer will not know that the notice was recorded against them. At some point in the future they will find out about it when they apply for credit, make a major purchase, or go through some kind of background check where a credit report is ran.

Is it possible that he wasn't aware that he owed state income tax.

Again, yes depending on how oblivious he is to what is going on around him. But it really isn't probable. Lots of people will claim that they had no idea that they had a debt - but that usually is a defense mechanism in trying to explain their behavior for not paying the taxes in the first place. In order for me to believe that Joe the Plumber didn't know that he owed, the following would have to be true: he moved constantly for several years and didn't provide forwarding addresses, failed to file returns, and the stated created returns for him based on the income reported to them from Joe's income sources. Joe was never able to receive the notifications of the tax debt and the state was never able to locate Joe, especially if Joe was self-employed and doing jobs that were never repeat business.