The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
Cook County Circuit Judge Tommy Brewer is being hounded by the Internal Revenue Service.Can you name that mysterious political party Judge Tommy Brewer is a member of ? Anyway, Judge Brewer's career was green lighted by this man. Surely, if the man wanted to not slate Judge Brewer, he wouldn't.
The IRS has slapped Brewer with seven liens — two filed as recently as last year — seeking payment of a total of $227,559 in personal income taxes while Brewer was an attorney in private practice between 1997 and 2010, the year the Illinois Supreme Court appointed him to a vacant seat on the Cook County bench.
“I’m a good guy,” the judge says. “I’m not trying to cheat anybody out of anything. I’m trying to battle them as I can. I’m not saying I don’t owe them anything. I thought I owed them about $50,000 . . . I pay my tax religiously.
“They’re just claiming that I didn’t file,” says Brewer, who’s among thousands of Cook County residents and businesses the state or federal government have gone after since 1985 for unpaid taxes, court fines or restitution in criminal cases. “In the later years, they say I didn’t pay enough. So I went out and hired an accountant. He suggested I start paying them. I have an installment agreement with them. I’m paying them a pretty penny.”
Brewer, 64, is paid $190,258 a year as a judge, and, since his appointment, Illinois taxpayers have paid him a total of $883,285.
His tax problems began more than a decade ago. The IRS filed its first lien against him in 2004, seeking $70,482 in income taxes for 1997, 1999 and 2000. And the liens kept mounting as Brewer made several failed attempts to get elected Cook County’s sheriff or state’s attorney.
