First Lady Nancy Reagan enjoyed fine clothing, which the press often commented on – it seemed poor taste to dress extravagantly while the country was in a recession and unemployment was high. In the first few months of their administration, Nancy Reagan’s press secretary habitually responded to criticism by responding that Nancy Reagan had received her Galano and Adolfo gowns before becoming first lady. Specifically, seven years before. As such, they were presents to a private individual, and could not be viewed as a bribe to a public official’s wife.
That was a lie. Because the first lady rarely returned the designer pieces lent to her by various fashion houses while her husband was in office, she was violating a law against accepting expensive gifts. To make it worse, she did not report all of them on her tax forms. In 1982, Nancy Reagan announced that she would stop accepting loans from designers – admitting she had been doing so before. All this looked pretty bad, but the First Lady was cleaning up her act, and only wearing pieces she paid for now.
Except she still accepted gifts from designers! Near the end of her eight years as First Lady, Nancy Reagan confessed she had continued taking and wearing expensive designer duds, without returning them and without paying taxes for them. Although no legal action was ever taken, the IRS eventually handed her a million-dollar bill for unpaid taxes.
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