By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician nominated by President Donald Trump to oversee the government’s Medicare and Medicaid health plans, should commit to paying over $400,000 in taxes he avoided, two Democratic U.S. Senators said on Thursday.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee that will decide whether to advance Oz’s nomination to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and committee member Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, in a letter to Oz seen by Reuters, said he also should commit to making public his tax filings for the past five years.
Oz may have neglected to pay $403,739 in Medicare taxes on more than $10 million of income from his media company from 2021 to 2023, a review of his financial records by the committee’s Democratic staffers showed last week.
Oz and Republicans on the committee say an extensive review by the Office of Government Ethics found that he had complied with the law.
The investigation showed that the missing payments stem from requirements for self-employed people. Democrats said they disputed Oz’s claim that he qualified for an exemption because he says he was not directly involved in the company’s activities.
"It defies common sense that you only engaged in limited activity in the LLC which bears your name, which you are a member of, and which owns your media company," Wyden and Warren wrote.
Oz took an opposing position in an attempt to avoid paying another set of taxes, they wrote, when in response to questions from committee staff he argued he was not liable for the investment income generated from the company because he "materially participated in the activities of this entity."
Oz, who has never held public office, appeared before the committee last week. The committee will vote at a later date on whether to advance to the full Senate his nomination to run CMS, which oversees health insurance for more than half of all Americans with an annual budget of $2.6 trillion.
Oz, who in 2022 unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania with Trump’s endorsement, is expected to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, as have nearly all of Trump’s nominees.