We’ll bet even the IRS hasn’t heard this one yet.
Gov. Paterson’s chief of staff now says he owed nearly $300,000 in back taxes, $100,000 more than was previously known – and his lawyer blamed the problem on “non-filer syndrome.”
Charles O’Byrne’s attorney, Richard Kestenbaum, mentioned the virtually unheard-of ailment at a briefing for reporters intended to quell the firestorm surrounding O’Byrne’s failure to file income-tax returns from 2001 to 2005.
O’Byrne, 49, a former Jesuit priest with close ties to the Kennedy family, has already blamed his neglect to file – first reported by The Post – on clinical depression.
Kestenbaum said yesterday O’Byrne also had “non-filer syndrome.”
“Many times, that syndrome causes them not to be able to file their tax returns,” he explained.
Rhondalee Dean-Royce, a spokeswoman for the American Psychiatric Association, said there is no such disorder or syndrome in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a standard reference.
Plenty of professionals don’t file because they’re too busy or too depressed or because of a family tragedy, said IRS spokesman Larry Wright. But he’s never heard of non-filer syndrome.
Other tax experts found the concept ridiculous.
“Yes, it’s quite common,” one Manhattan accountant joked. “A hundred percent of my clients suffer from this syndrome, and it gets especially bad every year as April 15th approaches.”
Paterson spokeswoman Marissa Shorenstein later played down Kestenbaum’s diagnosis.
“The lawyer was referring generally to a condition he has had experience with, both in private practice and while he worked at the IRS, called ‘late-filers syndrome.’ Charles O’Byrne has never been diagnosed with that syndrome,” she said.
The “syndrome” claim came five days after The Post first reported that O’Byrne – who earns $178,500 a year – recently repaid some $200,000 in back taxes, penalties and fees to state and federal tax authorities.
Yesterday, O’Byrne’s attorneys revealed his debt had actually reached $292,780.
They produced payment timelines that showed O’Byrne didn’t start filing his late tax returns until June 2006 – more than 18 months after he started working for Paterson as a speechwriter and disclosed his tax problems.
He didn’t significantly reduce the debt until February 2007.
The attorneys said O’Byrne sold off stock and secured more than $100,000 in loans and credit to pay off the tax debt.
The records showed the state Department of Taxation and Finance received its final payment of $3,641.85 Tuesday.
The lawyers insisted the payment was sent weeks ago, as O’Byrne initially said, but was not received by the state until later.
O’Byrne’s psychiatrist, Dr. Howard Kremen, released a statement saying he treated O’Byrne from 2001 to 2006 for major depression. O’Byrne is no longer on medication, he and the attorneys said.
The shrink’s statement made no mention of “non-filer syndrome.”