IRS says Southampton Town comptroller owes $650,000 in back taxes

Southampton Town Comptroller Tamara Wright owes the Internal Revenue Service more than $650,000, and the federal tax collection agency has already tried twice to garnishee her wages—once in October and again in February—to start making good on the debt.

But the town’s top financial officer said she does not know why the IRS filed a $651,316 lien against her last July, adding that she has all the information necessary to show that she does not owe any money. In October, Ms. Wright said that IRS officials agreed to give her additional time to prove that she does not owe the money, and was surprised when they returned to Town Hall in February, again threatening to garnishee her wages.

Ms. Wright said she now has until tax day—Thursday, April 15—to prove that she does not owe any money to the IRS.

According to the Suffolk County clerk’s website, the lien was filed against Ms. Wright in July, but the comptroller said she never received any notices about the action until late October, when an IRS agent went to the town attorney’s office to try to garnishee her wages. Ms. Wright, who earns $115,000 per year, said she had no idea the lien existed until October, and, as a result, did not list it on her 2009 financial disclosure form filed with the town, as she was required to do.

Ms. Wright’s financial disclosure form, which was not notarized, dated or signed, was not filed with the town clerk’s office until April 1, 2010—10 months after it was due, and six months after the IRS attempted to lay claim to a portion of her salary. The document was filed on the same day that The Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking a copy of Ms. Wright’s financial disclosure form.

New town employees are supposed to file their forms with the town clerk’s office within 30 days of their hiring, according to Assistant Town Attorney Joe Burke. Ms. Wright was hired as a town employee on June 1, 2009.

The copy of Ms. Wright’s 2009 financial disclosure form obtained by The Press appears to have been hastily filed—it was never notarized, as required by the town, and has a number of outstanding questions on it, some of which appear to be written on Post-It notes and stuck on the form in place of answers to questions.

Ms. Wright said she gave the financial disclosure form, which still contained a number of unanswered questions, to her assistant less than two weeks after she was named comptroller. She said the original form, which was never notarized, is “nowhere to be found,” and that the copy now on file with the clerk’s office is actually a photocopy of the form that she had with her personal records.

Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said she told the Town Board about Ms. Wright’s lien in an executive session following a work session about three weeks ago, just days after Deputy Town Attorney Kathleen Murray told her about it. Ms. Murray said that an IRS official dropped off a notice on February 23 stating that the agency “is putting a levy on Ms. Wright’s wages, salary and other income,” she said.

That levy has been temporarily lifted until April 15, Ms. Wright said. The comptroller explained that she hopes that she, her attorneys and accountants are able to prove that she does not owe the $651,316 before then. Ms. Wright said she does not know what will happen after she provides the IRS with proof that she paid her taxes.

The taxes the IRS claims Ms. Wright owes date back to 2002 and 2003, when Ms. Wright was working as a chief operating officer in the financial industry in the United Kingdom. Ms. Wright—who said she has always hired someone to file her taxes—said that preparing tax returns that involve multiple countries or income earned outside of the United States are “very complex.”

She added that she had “high-quality” and “reputable” accountants file her taxes during those years. Ms. Wright—who added that the divorce she is going through has complicated the IRS proceedings—declined to say who her accountants were in 2002 and 2003, the years that raised red flags at the IRS.

At least one Town Board member, Chris Nuzzi, said he thinks Ms. Wright should have told him and other board members about the debt sooner, especially considering that former Supervisor Linda Kabot, former Town Attorney Dan Adams, Town Management Services Administrator Richard Blowes, and Deputy Supervisor Bill Jones knew in October about a “dispute” that Ms. Wright was having with the IRS. Mr. Blowes, Mr. Jones and Ms. Kabot said they did not know that the dispute involved more than $650,000 in owed taxes.

Ms. Wright said she was surprised that Ms. Kabot, who was supervisor at the time, and Mr. Blowes did not know the total amount of her lien, adding that it was printed on the document dropped off at Town Hall by the IRS.

Some of the other Town Board members, meanwhile, said that Ms. Wright should have made sure that they were aware of the tax lien.

“I do wish she had told me about it earlier,” Mr. Nuzzi said on Monday. “It’s something that should’ve been disclosed.”

Mr. Nuzzi did not support Ms. Wright’s initial appointment as comptroller in 2009 and abstained from voting for her reappointment in January, stating that he wanted to see the results of the town’s financial audits. Ms. Wright produced the audits and, in a vote in February, Mr. Nuzzi—who said he was still unaware of the lien at the time—then voted to approve the contract that will allow Ms. Wright to serve as comptroller until December 31, 2011.

While Mr. Nuzzi and Nancy Graboski, another Town Board member, said they were unaware of Ms. Wright’s financial troubles when they hired her, Ms. Kabot, the former town supervisor, said that the comptroller told her about the issue and Ms. Kabot had alerted all board members, including Ms. Throne-Holst, who was a town councilwoman at the time, about the IRS dispute.

“For sure, Anna knew,” Ms. Kabot said. Regarding statements made by other board members, Ms. Kabot said: “If they’re telling you they don’t know, I would be surprised.”

But Ms. Throne-Holst, who is a friend of Ms. Wright and helped to get her foot in the door at Town Hall when she was hired as a consultant in 2008, said she didn’t know about the lien until about three weeks ago, when Ms. Murray informed her about it. She said she then alerted the other Town Board members at an executive session soon after.

The supervisor added that just because she is friendly with the town comptroller does not suggest she would have hidden such information. In fact, she says that their relationship would have given her more reason to tell the other board members about it—in order to allay any suspicions that she was hiding something.

“Had I known about it, I would’ve said something,” Ms. Throne-Holst said.

Ms. Wright acknowledged that her 2009 financial disclosure form does not include the lien. She explained that she started filling out the document last June, four months before she learned of the action. If she knew about the lien at the time, Ms. Wright said she would have listed it on the form. “If there is a place to disclose it, I certainly would have disclosed it,” she said.

Mr. Burke, who has been working with the Town Ethics Board on the simplified disclosure form that was adopted Tuesday night, said such information should have been included on Ms. Wright’s financial disclosure form. “I believe that there are questions pertinent to it,” he said in reference to the lien. “It’s a debt.”

The Ethics Board, which reviews all financial disclosure forms, has not yet reviewed Ms. Wright’s form. Mr. Burke noted that board members would not accept the document in its current form, noting that it lacks a date and notarization. He also said that they would require her to disclose the lien.

Ms. Wright’s form has a number of outstanding questions regarding the contract she had with the town as a consultant from May 2008 until she was hired as comptroller in June 2009. She said she was hoping that either Mr. Adams or Mr. Blowes would help her with the questions, but they were left unanswered.

The 2010 financial disclosure forms are now due June 15, and Ms. Wright, along with other town employees, will be required to file their documents before that deadline.

Ms. Wright’s reappointment generated controversy. The first vote failed after both Mr. Nuzzi and Town Councilman James Malone abstained from reappointing her. They changed their minds in early February, before Town Councilwoman Bridget Fleming was elected to the board.

Though both said that the lien would not have changed their votes, Mr. Nuzzi and Mr. Malone said they would like to have known about the town comptroller’s debt before being asked to hire her. “The more facts we have before us the better,” Mr. Nuzzi said. “This certainly would’ve been something to take into serious consideration.”

Mr. Malone, who works at the Suffolk County Clerk’s office, where the lien against Ms. Wright is filed, said he thinks that Ms. Wright had an obligation to tell him about the lien as soon as he become a councilman. He emphasized that he did not know about the lien before the supervisor informed him.

“It was incumbent upon her to talk with Sally Pope, Chris Nuzzi, Nancy Graboski, Linda Kabot—all five at that point,” said Mr. Malone, regarding the IRS’s first attempt to garnishee Ms. Wright’s wages. “The position that Tamara Wright operates in and serves us in is a financial position and it’s a financial question that we’re talking about.”

Ms. Graboski said she still would have voted to hire Ms. Wright even if she had known about the lien, while Ms. Fleming added that she does not think Ms. Wright was obligated to tell board members about the debt in the fall.

“She’s taken the steps she’s needed to take at each stage of this dispute in terms of being forthright,” Ms. Fleming said.

The town comptroller explained that when an IRS agent came to Town Hall in October to garnishee her wages, she and her attorney provided the paperwork to prove that she did not owe the money within 24 hours. The IRS withdrew its attempt to garnishee her wages, and because it was lifted so quickly, Ms. Wright said that no one, including Ms. Kabot, Mr. Blowes or Mr. Jones, saw a need to alert the Town Board about the incident.

“At that moment, I thought it would be resolved very quickly,” Ms. Wright said.

Ms. Wright said she was surprised to learn that Ms. Kabot thought that she had told the board members of her dispute with the IRS, adding that, at the end of their conversation, Ms. Wright had left it up to Ms. Kabot or Mr. Adams to decide whether or not to inform the other board members.

In the fall, Ms. Wright said she hoped that Ms. Throne-Holst would discuss her situation in executive session, explaining that she wanted the protections and confidentiality that the forum offers.

“It is a personnel and legal matter that needs the protections of executive session,” she said. “For all I knew, it had been discussed in executive session.”