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KPBS Evening Edition

Gómez's Tax Omission A Talker In 53rd District Congressional Race

Georgette Gómez in an undated campaign photo.
Campaign photo
Georgette Gómez in an undated campaign photo.

In 2017, City Council President and congressional candidate Georgette Gómez failed to pay taxes on her city council salary, according to a report from The San Diego Union-Tribune.

According to the report, Gómez failed to report more than $90,000 she earned for being on the city council.

Gómez’s Tax Omission A Talker In 53rd District Congressional Race
Listen to this story by Max Rivlin-Nadler.

The omission was revealed after Gómez released her tax filings in an effort to get her opponent, Qualcomm heiress Sara Jacobs, to reveal her own.

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In a statement to KPBS, Gómez admitted she had made a mistake on her own taxes and has now filed an amended return.

“Like most people, I trusted my accountant to file my taxes accurately and I was shocked to find out that my 2017 returns were not properly filed," she said in the statement. "My accountant has taken responsibility for the errors. But I, too, take responsibility and I’ve filed a corrected return and paid the back taxes.”

Jacobs released her own tax returns last weekend, showing millions of dollars in income, mostly from her family trust. She’s paid over $3 million in income tax over the past three years.

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Morgan Hill, a spokesperson for Jacobs’ congressional campaign, said that Jacobs believes the wealthy should be taxed more.

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“Sara believes that she should be taxed more and that we should raise the capital gains tax rate,” Hill said in a statement.

Jacobs’ grandfather, Irwin Jacobs, is a major supporter of KPBS.

In a text message to KPBS, Will Rodriguez-Kennedy, the chairman of the San Diego Democratic Party, which has endorsed Gómez, said that while it was “unfortunate” to see the incorrect filing, “the council president was transparent and transparency even to one’s own detriment is honorable.”

Gómez is now the second candidate from a working-class background in recent weeks to have their financial filings fall under intense scrutiny.

Last week, city council candidate Kelvin Barrios suspended his campaign after he failed to disclose $80,000 in salary from a labor union in his financial disclosure forms.