You’d think the Obama Administration would’ve asked all of its potential nominees one simply question by now: Did you happen to pay all of the taxes you’re legally obligated to pay? You’d think it would ask that question, but apparently you’d be wrong.

President Obama’s choice as chief of protocol for the State Department, a position that carries the status of an ambassadorship, did not file tax returns for 2005 and 2006, errors she corrected last November.

The nominee, Capricia Penavic Marshall, has placed blame for the problem on the Postal Service and on miscommunication between her husband and their accountant.

How do you fail to file tax returns for two years in a row? You blame the post office? Really:

In her written answers and in accounts she gave to government officials, Ms. Marshall has said the errors were unintentional. She has said that her husband failed to recognize that the couple’s accountant had included the tax returns for 2005 in a binder he provided with copies of the returns, and that the actual paperwork was never mailed.

The couple learned something was awry, Ms. Marshall has said, when the Internal Revenue Service notified them last fall that their 2006 return had never arrived. She wrote that an agent “advised us that there were a large number of tax returns misplaced by the D.C. post office for the 2006 tax year.”

That call led the couple to the discovery that the authorities had no record of their returns for 2005 and 2006. No late fees or penalties were assessed when they later submitted the returns.

Uh huh. First of all, no late fees were assessed? On either 2005 or 2006? She failed to submit her tax return for two years in a row and somehow managed to avoid being penalized? Quite a remarkable feat.

Second of all, how did she, her husband, and their accountant all fail to recognize that they neither owed money nor received a refund? To get nothing back or have to send something more, they would’ve had to pay exactly the right amount of taxes for two consecutive years.

Something about the story doesn’t check out.