John Meredith

Huntsville City Council candidate John Meredith. (Paul Gattis/pgattis@al.com)

Huntsville City Council District 5 incumbent Will Culver, right, with campaign supporter Wiley Day. (Paul Gattis/pgattis@al.com)

John Meredith, who is challenging Huntsville City Council President Will Culver in the Aug. 23 municipal election, said Thursday that Culver was a "tax cheat" for having six years of unpaid taxes.

Meredith made the accusation at a Thursday morning press conference at the Huntsville Municipal Complex.

Meredith said Culver's tax issues are even more egregious since he voted to support a 1 cent sales tax increase the council passed in 2013.

"Raising taxes on hard-working citizens of Huntsville while refusing to pay his own for six consecutive years is the height of hypocrisy," Meredith said.

Culver, at his own press conference Thursday afternoon, said he believed voters would be understanding of his situation. He said he has paid some of his taxes, just not all of his taxes.

Culver is seeking a third term on the city council representing west Huntsville.

"We all are taxpaying citizens and I know unequivocally that the general public understands, especially when you are self-employed and some of those situations," Culver said. "This is not something where I have failed to pay taxes or refusing to live up to my tax obligation. This is a process that is in the negotiation stage as we speak."

Meredith provided reporters with a two-page federal tax lien form that indicated unpaid balance totaling $44,873.26 over a six-year span from 2007-2012. The liens range from a high of $11,237.20 in 2007 to a low of $2,257.63 in 2011.

"We would never say that information is incorrect," Culver said. "What we are saying is it does not accurately reflect the amount of taxes that we actually owed. If you do not file a year of tax returns, the IRS will impute your tax liability and with that will come astronomical penalties for under-filing, filing late and interest that accrued and that's what has happened.

"If you were to go back right now to 2007-2008 and take off the penalties and interest and see what the real dollar amount is, you would see it would not be anything remotely close to what you have seen on the tax liens."

The unpaid taxes are "interest and penalties," Culver said.

"Basically, primarily, interest and penalties and the government will work with clients like they are working with us to abate those, or remove those," Culver said. "And that's what our tax teams are doing."

Culver was asked at his afternoon news conference how those penalties and interest came about.

"Those penalties came about as a result of not filing taxes but maybe not paying all of the taxes or not filing on a timely basis," he said. "So if you go back to those years, we have to understand that you cannot have a tax lien unless you filed a tax return. So my point is we have paid taxes. Those are interests and penalties as it relates to that."