Town council candidate has faced issues with state, federal tax payments
A Lexington town council candidate has owed nearly $200,000 in unpaid taxes over the past 15 years. The candidate says, however, the issue has been resolved.
In the last 15 years, candidate Doug Leonard has had at least 12 state tax liens and 5 federal tax liens taken out against him for failure to pay taxes on time, records showed. A lien is typically taken out after a person has been given multiple opportunities to pay a tax bill and has continued to not pay, according to Clint Wallace, the director of the Taxpayer Assistance Program at the University of South Carolina.
“Sometimes I’m self-employed so it’s not unusual that I owe some money,” Leonard said when reached by a reporter with The State.
Leonard, a political newcomer and one of two men running against three incumbents for three seats on the council, has said financial transparency is one of his priorities.
The liens total $197,000 in overdue taxes and penalties — $9,586 from the S.C. Department of Revenue since 2010 and $187,592 from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service since 2009, according to county and state databases. One IRS notice, filed in February 2018, noted six instances of issues with taxes listed under the code “6672.” That code, Wallace explained, is for a penalty in which a person willfully fails to pay payroll taxes to the government. When employers withhold money from employees for taxes, that money is supposed to be sent to the government.
“Failure to pay that money is very bad. It’s much more serious than income tax problems because it’s taking someone else’s money,” Wallace said.
When reached about the liens, Leonard said he didn’t remember specifics, but that the issues had been resolved. When asked about the federal lien from February 2018, he told The State he’d had a company that “went broke” but that he wasn’t sure if those were connected.
The state revenue department’s lien registry showed that Leonard, who owns Charis Real Estate Group, had satisfied all liens against him, meaning they’d been paid off or that the department had agreed to a payment plan. Leonard explained that he’d entered into what’s known as an “offer in compromise” with the IRS.
An offer in compromise is an administrative process that lets the taxpayer less than what they owe, typically spread out over payments. It’s generally used in situations where a taxpayer doesn’t have enough assets or income to pay the full amount within a certain timeframe, Wallace explained.
When presented with specifics about the liens and about the fact that liens are only taken out after failure to pay, Leonard told The State he wasn’t a CPA.
The State searched both county and state databases for the other candidates in the Lexington town council race — Greg Brewer, Gavin Smith, Ron Williams and Todd Carnes — and did not find instances of tax liens.
This story was originally published October 28, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
