State tax commissioner resigns after not paying taxes


A member of the Louisiana Tax Commission resigned this week after the revelation that he failed to pay property taxes on a building he owned for 30 years. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards asked the commissioner, Jimmie Thorns, to step down following the news of his tax delinquency.
"Since Mr. Thorns' issues involve property tax avoidance with the City of New Orleans from an entity he owned that filed for bankruptcy decades ago," said Edwards' office, the governor was unaware of the debt when he appointed Thorns to his position earlier this year, and Thorns "did not disclose the information" at that time.
Before his resignation, Thorns earned $56,000 to oversee Louisiana tax policy. He owes about $140,000 in back taxes for a house in New Orleans.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
-
Fannie Flagg’s 6 favorite books that sparked her imagination
Feature The author recommends works by Johanna Spyri, John Steinbeck, and more
-
Google: A monopoly past its prime?
Feature Google’s antitrust case ends with a slap on the wrist as courts struggle to keep up with the tech industry’s rapid changes
-
Patrick Hemingway: The Hemingway son who tended to his father’s legacy
Feature He was comfortable in the shadow of his famous father, Ernest Hemingway
-
New York court tosses Trump's $500M fraud fine
Speed Read A divided appeals court threw out a hefty penalty against President Trump for fraudulently inflating his wealth
-
Trump said to seek government stake in Intel
Speed Read The president and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan reportedly discussed the proposal at a recent meeting
-
US to take 15% cut of AI chip sales to China
Speed Read Nvidia and AMD will pay the Trump administration 15% of their revenue from selling artificial intelligence chips to China
-
NFL gets ESPN stake in deal with Disney
Speed Read The deal gives the NFL a 10% stake in Disney's ESPN sports empire and gives ESPN ownership of NFL Network
-
Samsung to make Tesla chips in $16.5B deal
Speed Read Tesla has signed a deal to get its next-generation chips from Samsung
-
FCC greenlights $8B Paramount-Skydance merger
Speed Read The Federal Communications Commission will allow Paramount to merge with the Hollywood studio Skydance
-
Tesla reports plummeting profits
Speed Read The company may soon face more problems with the expiration of federal electric vehicle tax credits
-
Dollar faces historic slump as stocks hit new high
Speed Read While stocks have recovered post-Trump tariffs, the dollar has weakened more than 10% this year