Ron Brown Failed to Pay Employer Tax : Cabinet: Commerce secretary says he only recently learned of Social Security levies. Disclosure raises charges of a double standard in White House.

Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown disclosed Sunday that he failed to pay legally required Social Security taxes for a part-time domestic employee, fueling charges that an unfair double standard has been applied to male and female candidates for Clinton Administration Cabinet posts.

Brown, a prominent attorney who reported earning $750,000 last year, said in response to a question on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” that he learned only last month that he was legally obliged to pay Social Security taxes for a woman who cleaned his house several hours a week. A longstanding law requires such payments for anyone who earns more than $50 in a quarter.

Brown added that he was never asked about the matter by then-President-elect Clinton or anyone else during the nominating process.

Brown’s disclosure, coming only days after U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood withdrew her name from consideration as attorney general, added to the embarrassing questions that the Administration faces as it searches anew for someone to head the Justice Department.

Wood was widely reported to be Clinton’s top choice for the job until it was made public that she had hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny. Unlike Brown’s failure to pay Social Security taxes, what Wood did was not against the law because she hired the nanny in 1986, before the current immigration law was passed. She also paid Social Security and other taxes on the employee’s income.

The apparent paradox fueled continuing criticism of the Administration.

“Ron Brown is just the first to confirm what we all knew, which is that questions were raised with women nominees to Cabinet positions that were not raised with men,” Democratic political consultant Ann F. Lewis said. “In this role, as in others, women come under far stricter scrutiny and have to prove themselves in ways that men do not.”

Added Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women: “Sounds like a double standard to me.”

Ireland added that it is a “terrible irony” that two women in a row should be knocked out of contention for attorney general because of questions surrounding their arrangements for child care. Only two weeks ago, corporate lawyer Zoe Baird withdrew her name from consideration after admitting that she had broken the law, both in hiring a couple who were illegal immigrants as her baby-sitter and chauffeur after the immigration law took effect and in failing to pay for Social Security and other employee benefits.

Another reported contender for the attorney general job, Washington lawyer Charles F. C. Ruff, apparently was dropped from consideration Friday when officials discovered that he had committed precisely the same offense that Brown acknowledged--hiring a cleaning woman and failing to pay her Social Security taxes.

Like Brown, Ruff said he only became aware of the legal requirement last month and has since paid the taxes.

In a statement issued Friday, Wood said that while she had not broken any laws, it was impossible for her to keep her name in consideration for the nomination in “the current political environment,” a clear reference to the furor that had arisen over Baird’s nomination.

On Sunday, the saga continued as the New York Times reported that sources close to Wood insisted she had offered the White House “full details of her seven-year employment of an illegal as her baby-sitter, first orally more than a week ago and later in documents and records.”

Later in the day, the White House released a letter from Wood to the newspaper, saying that she had not been asked for such details about her baby-sitter, “and thus I did not ‘explain’ her employment ‘in detail,’ beyond assuring my questioners that I had fully complied with the laws and paid all required taxes.”

“To reiterate,” she concluded, “I did not mislead anyone at any point, and I have obeyed all laws.”

Vice President Al Gore said Clinton was not “comfortable” with what he considered to be her evasiveness on the question.

Gore, appearing on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley,” said that he and Clinton did not dispute Wood’s contention that she had fully complied with immigration and tax laws. But Gore said her responses on the question during interviews with the President, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and senior White House officials did not give Clinton enough confidence in her to go forward with the nomination.

“The job of attorney general is not a privilege that anybody has until some crime is proven, thus taking it away,” Gore said. “There has to be a comfort level. And in the circumstances, the kind of give-and-take that took place didn’t lead to that comfort level.”

Wood was asked repeatedly during interviews whether she had a “Zoe Baird problem,” Administration officials said.

When Clinton learned that her Trinidadian baby-sitter had in fact been in the United States illegally for some years before Wood hired her, the President hit the roof and demanded that she withdraw from consideration, White House officials have said.

“Her interpretation of the word ‘problem’ is probably where the dispute lies,” Gore said. “A question of that kind, in my opinion, could best be answered by saying: ‘No, no law was violated. However, here’s something you should know.’ ”

Gore indicated that Wood was not jettisoned because of illegal or improper acts but because the President, who initially was impressed by her resume and her demeanor, lost faith in her judgment and political sensitivity.

“There’s nothing wrong with what she did,” Gore said. “However, the process of communication has to be one that the President feels comfortable with. And you can’t--you can’t minimize the importance of that, particularly where you’re dealing with someone with whom there has not been a longstanding work relationship in the past.”

The normally unflappable Gore was clearly made uneasy by questions on the Wood case. He stumbled through his responses, and he tried several times to change the subject to the “larger context” of the nation’s child care problem.

Asked if he and his wife, Mary Elizabeth (Tipper) Gore, had ever employed illegal immigrants to help with their children or around the house, he said: “No. We’ve been lucky in being able for Tipper to stay at home with the children. But we have not (hired illegal immigrants). And we’ve paid Social Security taxes on everybody that’s worked for us.”

Gore said that based on what he knew of Brown’s failure to pay Social Security taxes on his housekeeper, the commerce secretary should not be disqualified. He said all nominees, men and women, should be held to the same standards of ethics.

Brown indicated that he did not know of his obligation until a political firestorm arose over Baird’s nomination. “It happened in January, when this came to light, when most people found out that there was an obligation,” he said. Brown did not say how much he had paid in back taxes and penalties.

Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, asked on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation” whether he had ever hired an illegal immigrant, dismissed it equivocally: “I have never--my wife and I have never, to my knowledge, done anything illegal. But again, I’m not here to talk about baby-sitters. I’m here to talk about the economy.”

White House Communications Director George Stephanopoulos said the Administration is trying to ascertain whether any Cabinet or sub-Cabinet officials other than Brown had come forward to pay back taxes on employees.

Mickey Kantor, the U.S. trade representative, said on Cable News Network on Sunday that he was asked during the nomination process whether he had violated any tax laws and had said he had not. He said he was never asked whether he had employed any illegal immigrants but said Sunday that he and his wife had not.

Kantor, who was Clinton’s campaign chairman last year, said he did not think that female nominees were being subjected to harsher scrutiny than men. But he said the treatment of Wood was “unfair.”

“Judge Wood is one of the most thoroughly decent, able people of integrity I’ve ever known,” Kantor said. “I worked with Judge Wood in legal services, and I don’t know of anyone of higher character that I’ve ever met in my life. And so it’s really unfair what’s happened here.”