Published in the Daily Local News, by Michael Rellahan

August 26, 2014

Chester County Republican officials on Tuesday joined the call from supporters of Gov. Tom Corbett demanding that his Democratic opponent in the coming gubernatorial election release both personal and corporate tax returns.

Their comments came at a press event held on the front steps of the county’s Historic Courthouse in the warm noonday sun as traffic blared past on North High Street. GOP Chairman Val DiGiorgio, Commissioner Terence Farrell and county Sheriff Carolyn “Bunny” Welsh said the failure of Tom Wolf to do “as he had promised” raised questions in their minds.

“The bottom line question is, ‘What is Tom Wolf hiding?’” said Farrell, pointing at a photo of Wolf on a placard showing the incorporation documents for his business, the Wolf Organization, in Delaware. “Is there something in those tax returns that he does not want the average Pennsylvanian to see?”

Welsh claimed that Wolf was advocating an increase in taxes for families with incomes of $75,000 and up, but that he himself had paid less than half the rate that the average Pennsylvanian paid in income taxes in the past — 8 percent compared to 18 percent. She said he should follow Corbett’s lead and release his tax returns to give the voters a better sense of his background.

DiGiorgio, who introduced the pair and led the event along with Corbett campaign staff members, charged that Wolf was not being forthcoming with county voters in his run for the governor’s office. Wolf, he said, was a “candidate for governor who says one thing and does another, a candidate for governor who had two sets of rules — one for himself and one for the rest of us.”

The trio called on Wolf to release 10 years of his personal and corporate tax returns, saying he had initially promised to do so before the Democratic primary but has since backed away from doing so.

The questions concerning Wolf’s tax returns square with the Corbett campaign’s recent charges about whether Wolf was using what it termed the “Delaware loophole” to avoid paying corporate taxes in Pennsylvania, at the same time he is campaigning on his business acumen and a call for higher corporate tax rates in the state.

Wolf’s business incorporated in Delaware in April 2006. He sold the business to an investment firm that same year, but later repurchased it after it went bankrupt. But Corbett campaign members say he did not move the company back from being incorporated in Delaware at the time, and that its incorporation in Delaware allows it to avoid paying taxes here.

The Wolf campaign has told reporters that his business does, in fact, pay corporate taxes in Pennsylvania, and has released his tax returns.

“Tom Wolf’s company has never taken advantage of the Delaware tax loophole,” the Wolf campaign said in a statement on its website, in turn attacking the Corbett campaign for making misleading accusations about the subject. “The Wolf Organization is headquartered in, and files corporate taxes in, Pennsylvania. The Wolf Organization is registered in 28 different states, and it does business in and pays taxes in all of them. In fact, Tom has proposed a comprehensive plan to close the Delaware tax loophole and other corporate loopholes when he’s governor.”

It also cited University of Delaware professor of law and political science Sheldon Pollack, a widely published tax expert, who says that being chartered in that state, “just means you’re organized under the laws of Delaware,” and that no tax breaks accrue from that status.

A spokesman for the campaign, Mark Nicastre, said in an e-mail that “Tom Wolf has released his personal income taxes and financial information from the Wolf Organization — a privately held company. Tom Corbett is trying to distract from scandals that have engulfed his administration. In the past month, Corbett has come under fire for holding campaign meetings in his government office, keeping a ghost employee on staff, and deleting thousands of e-mails in a likely violation of the state’s open records law.”

The event in West Chester Tuesday comes at a time when the campaigns have been trading increasingly hostile charges in television commercials, and when a recent poll showed the popularity gap between Wolf and Corbett, which had once been at 20 percentage points, narrowing.

A new survey conducted for The New York Times and CBS News shows Wolf still in the lead over the first-term incumbent, although some question a new method used by the survey takers.

Including so-called “leaners,” those who identify themselves as voters leaning to one candidate or another, Wolf leads Corbett 52 percent to 39 percent. Without those voters, however, the margin slips to 42 percent to 33 percent in favor of Wolf.

The survey, done for The Times and CBS by YouGov.com, uses responses from a sizeable group of registered voters contacted through the Internet who express interest in being interviewed over a period of time, rather than random queries of individual voters.

(Michael Rellahan, "Chesco GOP leaders attack Wolf; challenger fires back," Daily Local News, 8/26/14)