(Washington Examiner) Fines are piling up for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) over her failure to resolve a New York state tax warrant filed against her defunct business five years ago.
New York state filed a tax warrant against Brook Avenue Press, a children-focused publishing house Ocasio-Cortez founded in 2012, on July 6, 2017, to collect $1,618 in unpaid corporate taxes. Ocasio-Cortez has yet to pay a penny of her overdue corporate taxes, causing the current balance of the tax warrant to swell by 52% to $2,461 as of Wednesday afternoon.
New York dissolved Brook Avenue Press in October 2016, state corporate records show. The state filed its tax warrant against Ocasio-Cortez’s defunct business about two months after she launched her successful primary campaign against former Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY).
A representative for the Bronx County Clerk’s Office confirmed to the Washington Examiner that the tax warrant against Ocasio-Cortez’s business remains open.
Ocasio-Cortez’s office previously told the New York Post in March 2019 that the lawmaker first learned of the tax warrant against her former business after she was sworn into Congress in January that year.
Ocasio-Cortez initially pledged to repay her delinquent corporate tax bill, but her office later said the warrant was issued “in error” and that she was contesting the matter.
“The congresswoman is still in the process of contesting the tax warrant. The business has been closed for several years now, and so we believe that the state Tax Department has continued to collect the franchise tax in error,” Ocasio-Cortez spokeswoman Lauren Hitt told the New York Post in May 2020.
“As anyone who’s tried to contest a tax bill in error knows, it takes time,” Hitt said.
