Who designed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's tax the rich dress?

[Hawkeye]

A rich woman who routinely cheats on her taxes is who.

Designer Aurora James called her “Tax the Rich” dress for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “powerful message” — but it’s not one she has taken to heart.

The 37-year-old fashionista who made waves at the Met Gala with Democratic-Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last week is a notorious tax deadbeat with unpaid debts dogging her in multiple states, records show.

Most of luxe-living James’ arrears center on Cultural Brokerage Agency, an LLC she formed in 2011 to serve as the parent company of her fashion brand, which today is known as Brother Vellies. It’s a favorite of people like Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Meghan Markle.

The company racked up three open tax warrants in New York state for failing to withhold income taxes from employees’ paychecks totaling $14,798, the state Department of Taxation and Finance told The Post. The debts — which were incurred before the pandemic — stem from 2018 and 2019. The company has been hit with 15 warrants in total since 2015.

The company got into a deeper hole with the feds. Between April 2018 and April 2019, the Internal Revenue Service placed six federal liens on Cultural Brokerage Agency totaling $103,220. The liens specifically cite the company’s failure to remit employee payroll taxes.

The IRS declined to comment on their current status.

“Just because they take it out of your paycheck doesn’t mean they’re sending it to the government,” David Cenedella, a Baruch College taxation lecturer explained after reviewing the liens. “It’s certainly not something you want. I would not say your average business out there has this. Something went wrong.”


Aurora James has a new home in California. Aurora James owes $2,504 in property taxes on this home.

While James apparently has no problem stiffing the Taxman, she isn’t shy about taking money from taxpayers — her company received in $41,666 in pandemic relief aid.

Over the years Cultural Brokerage Agency has also faced multiple legal challenges as a result of habitual nonpayment of worker benefits.

In October 2019 the state Worker’s Compensation Board slapped the company with a $17,000 fine for not carrying worker’s-comp insurance between March 2017 and February 2018. The company currently owes $62,722 and no payments have been received to date, a rep for the board told The Post. Workers’ comp is paid out when an employee is hurt at work and misses time.

Ex-staffers blasted the operation as a sweatshop that relied on legions of unpaid interns working full-time jobs.

“I experienced a lot of harassment when I worked for her,” one former contract employee told The Post. “Aurora would ask me to do things that were not in anyone’s job description, like scheduling her gynecological appointments. The work environment was so hostile that I was afraid to ask for my check.” The employee was ultimately terminated.

An ex-intern called James “quite cold,” adding that “she never gives recognition or acknowledgement to her team.”

James is also an alleged rent deadbeat, records show.

In August 2020, James’ landlord filed papers to evict Brother Vellies from their location at 71 Franklin St. in Brooklyn, as well as demanding more than $25,000 plus interest for staying beyond the end of her lease. The case was settled.

She was sued by a previous landlord in February 2018 for more than $5,000 in unpaid rent at her shop’s old address at 209 West 38th Street in Manhattan.

“Aurora, obviously we did not want it to come to this, but you never have paid your rent in a timely manner,” wrote Matthew Mandell, a rep for her Manhattan landlord in a frustrated March 2018 email. “We have been more than patient.”

Though Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proudly labeled James a “working class” designer as they waltzed down the Met Gala red carpet, her lifestyle has been anything but. As the pandemic raged across America, igniting a deep recession, James scooped up a $1.6 million residence in Los Angeles in September 2020.

The Tudor-style home with cathedral ceilings, a master-bedroom fireplace and backyard hot tub sits on 7,095 square feet in the posh Hollywood Hills, according to RedFin.

True to form, the property is already listed as “delinquent” by the Los Angeles County assessor’s office, which told The Post James owed $2,504 in property taxes.

Though Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was comped tickets to the annual ball for boldfacers, entry to the famously exclusive Met Gala runs $35,000 a head. James attended the bash with Benjamin Bronfman, a rumored boyfriend she’s frequently spotted with. Bronfman, 39, is a scion of the powerful Bronfman family and its distilling empire. He is worth an estimated $100 million.

Photos from the event show the pair smiling broadly with Ocasio-Cortez and her boyfriend Riley Roberts.

James’ unpaid bills belie her champagne tastes. She frequently jets off to exclusive locations, her Instagram richly decorated with photos from Jamaica, Morocco, France, Indonesia, Mexico, Italy, the United Kingdom and The Hamptons.

The 37-year-old fashionista who made waves at the Met Gala with Democratic-Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last week is a notorious tax deadbeat with unpaid debts dogging her in multiple states.

The 37-year-old fashionista who made waves at the Met Gala with Democratic-Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last week is a notorious tax deadbeat with unpaid debts dogging her in multiple states.

She also found money to make a $2,700 donation to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“It’s the height of hypocrisy when socialists attend a $30,000 per ticket gala with a message of ‘tax the rich’ while wearing an overpriced dress by a luxury designer who doesn’t pay taxes,” Republican Staten Island Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis told The Post. “What happened to everyone paying their fair share?”

Both James and her reps did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Post.

James pushed progressive causes long before making headlines for dressing America’s most famous socialist. After the death of George Floyd in May 2020, she created the 15 percent pledge, demanding that major companies commit to buying 15% of their products from black-owned businesses. The idea took off with major companies like Bloomingdale’s, Vogue, Sephora, and Crate & Barrel, according to a 15 percent pledge website.

“This is the least you can do for us. We represent 15% of the population and we need to represent 15% of your shelf space,” James said in an Instagram post announcing the idea.

Ocasio-Cortez, who has made a career out of demanding better worker wages and benefits, and taxing the rich to pay for her budget-busting federal programs, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

https://nypost.com/2021/09/18/aocs-tax- ... -deadbeat/

[Alf'Omega]

These kinds of Right Wing hit jobs are par for the course. This woman is definitely disorganized when it comes to money, but to call her a tax deadbeat is just the kind of thing you'd expect people who are out of touch with reality to believe. It says she owes $2,500 in property taxes eh? On a $1.6 million home? Do you have any idea what the property taxes are on a property like that in NY? If she owes only $2,500 that means most of it has already been paid. Records will probably show that I owe $8,000 in property taxes on my home as well, but it isn't due until December.

The real scandal and hypocrisy is that the only reason this woman is being attacked is because she provided a service for one of the Right's most demonized villains. The fact that she is black and a woman is just gravy for their audience. Meanwhile, the real scandal is that hundreds of Republican Congressmen, mostly white men with wealth, are blocking the increase to the debt ceiling. Talk about deadbeats. They're refusing to pay for the debts they supported and accrued under the previous administration.

What’s odd about this standoff is that Republicans and Democrats agree that Congress has to address the debt limit, but Republicans are refusing to vote for what they themselves consider the right outcome.

“We don’t want to have a national default. That would be catastrophic,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told reporters on Tuesday. “Democrats can solve this all by themselves. They have the votes to do it. Do it.”

Failing to deal with the debt limit could roil financial markets and even disrupt basic government operations.

“Nearly 50 million seniors could stop receiving Social Security checks for a time,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote in an opinion piece this week. “Troops could go unpaid. Millions of families who rely on the monthly child tax credit could see delays. America, in short, would default on its obligations.”

Congress has traditionally raised the statutory debt ceiling on a bipartisan basis, with votes from members of both parties. Republicans voted to suspend the limit three times during the Trump administration, adding trillions of dollars to the national debt. In 2017, when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, Democrats joined them in voting to suspend the country’s borrowing authority even though the GOP was pushing a $1.5 trillion tax cut.

During the 2011 debt ceiling crisis, which resulted in the first-ever downgrade of U.S. debt holdings, Republicans demanded Democrats agree to enact budget cuts in exchange for an increase in the debt limit.

This time around, Republicans aren’t asking for anything; they’re simply refusing to vote for it.

“For Republicans to suddenly throw their hands in the air and abscond from their responsibility to pay debt that they proudly supported is nothing short of a dine-and-dash of historic proportions,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday. “Republicans racked trillions of dollars of debt under President Trump and are demanding American families foot the bill.”

[Alf'Omega]

When a regular person doesn't pay taxes it's "criminal tax evasion" but when a rich person does it they're just "a savvy businessperson." Workers have their taxes taken directly out of their paycheck, while the super-rich are paid in ways that allow them to skip taxes all the time. And the IRS only goes after the tax cheats who don't have a team of lawyers to protect themselves - the working poor are actually audited at the same rate as the richest 1%.

The same imbalance hampers the business world. 55 corporations paid $0 in federal income taxes last year. I've yet to hear of a single small business owner who paid $0 in taxes. How can small businesses compete with corporations that can hire lobbyists to help write the tax code, and lawyers and accountants to enforce it?

If you're posting things like this NYPost author just did, whining about some black woman owing a few thousand in taxes, then you're part of the problem.

https://www.propublica.org/article/irs- ... ronm46hulQ

[Moksha]

Republicans would have heaped praise if the message had been "Tax cuts for the Rich".

[Hawkeye]

In October 2019 the state Worker’s Compensation Board slapped the company with a $17,000 fine for not carrying worker’s-comp insurance between March 2017 and February 2018. The company currently owes $62,722 and no payments have been received to date, a rep for the board told The Post. Workers’ comp is paid out when an employee is hurt at work and misses time.

Ex-staffers blasted the operation as a sweatshop that relied on legions of unpaid interns working full-time jobs.

Whatever happened to the $15/hr minimum wage and the idea that unpaid internships are evil? This woman owes a lot more than a few thousand dollars. The hypocrisy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sporting a tax the rich dress amongst the liberal financial elites at the royal Met Gala is something I would have thought would come from the Babylon Bee. But true to form, truth is stranger than fiction.

America already has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world. The fact is that the rich are paying more than their fair share and have been for some time. The Democrats want to raise taxes, right? Well what good is that when they are unwilling to pay the taxes they already owe, not to mention their employees. Let's give Bernie Sanders some credit. At least he admits that he wants to tax the middle class at 60 and 70% and create a new bourgeoise political class that would be exempt from these taxes.

Just like London Breed dancing maskless and partying it up while crying preschoolers are forced to wear uncomfortable hot masks 8 and 10 hours/day, the rules are for thee but not for me. When have the communists ever done it any differently?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I love that a poster who doesn’t read copy and pasted an entire article expecting us to read it. Ironic.

Whatever the case may be, if the black woman who made the dress is engaging in shady employment practices she’s either a genius (you’d think Xananx would be especially excited to see a business owner screwing over their employees given his statements during the last President’s tenure) or a piece of crap who exploits desperate people for their labor. There’s a lot of hypocrisy and projection going on with ‘woke’ people in addition to the complete rejection of accountability, and they use their wokeness as a cover to exploit and predate on others.

That said, why does Xanax seem to only post about brown people doing disagreeable stuff? Like. He really seems to dial in on brown people when they run afoul of the law or social convention. It’s weird. I mean, I’m sure his days of frequenting Stormfront’s website are over. He said he doesn’t go there any more. He wouldn’t attempt to deceive others, would he? He wouldn’t use sock puppets to circumvent being on Ignore and to troll a certain poster from the southeast? A Mormon priesthood holder is honest in all his dealings with his fellow man, right? A disciple of Christ and a temple endowed man wouldn’t openly declare his desire for secession, wish for violent revolution where people are murdered, and spread his supremacist politics over his professed faith?

Nah, that’d be crazy. No faithful Mormon would act that way.

- Doc

[Alf'Omega]

In October 2019 the state Worker’s Compensation Board slapped the company with a $17,000 fine for not carrying worker’s-comp insurance between March 2017 and February 2018. The company currently owes $62,722 and no payments have been received to date, a rep for the board told The Post. Workers’ comp is paid out when an employee is hurt at work and misses time.

Ex-staffers blasted the operation as a sweatshop that relied on legions of unpaid interns working full-time jobs.

Whatever happened to the $15/hr minimum wage and the idea that unpaid internships are evil? This woman owes a lot more than a few thousand dollars. The hypocrisy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sporting a tax the rich dress amongst the liberal financial elites at the royal Met Gala is something I would have thought would come from the Babylon Bee. But true to form, truth is stranger than fiction.

America already has one of the most progressive tax systems in the world. The fact is that the rich are paying more than their fair share and have been for some time. The Democrats want to raise taxes, right? Well what good is that when they are unwilling to pay the taxes they already owe, not to mention their employees. Let's give Bernie Sanders some credit. At least he admits that he wants to tax the middle class at 60 and 70% and create a new bourgeoise political class that would be exempt from these taxes.

Just like London Breed dancing maskless and partying it up while crying preschoolers are forced to wear uncomfortable hot masks 8 and 10 hours/day, the rules are for thee but not for me. When have the communists ever done it any differently?

Whatever she owes, it is pennies compared to your Orange Lord and Savior who not only lied about giving over his tax returns after an "audit" but then decided to use lawyers to prevent Congress from obtaining them. There is no hypocrisy here on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's part None. Your attempt to find some is just indicative of your racist mentality and that which exists predominantly in Republican minds. You'll gladly turn a blind eye to the white men in this country who owe a cumulative amount that could end world hunger, but then suddenly get all indignant at the idea that a minority could be behind in her tax payments. I mean what are you worried about? The IRS is on it, and they're going to get whatever she owes no doubt about it. What they aren't going t do is go after the thousands of wealthy white men who have an army of attorneys ready to go to war.

[ceeboo]

There is no hypocrisy here on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's part None.

[Cultellus]

Gorilla

[Cultellus]

Gorilla