My neighbor, George W. Bush

For Bush, home is a box in Chicago
His address is a post office box downtown, according to his federal income tax return(registration required)

WASHINGTON -- Home is where the money is when it comes time for President Bush to file his taxes.

Home is not the White House, and home is not the range of his Crawford, Texas, ranch.

Home is Chicago.

Post Office Box 803968, Chicago, IL 60680, that is--according to the 2004 federal income tax return that Bush filed this spring, just like returns the president has filed every year since his election.

This is not some undisclosed location. This is the downtown post office box of Northern Trust Corp., the Chicago-based, multinational holding company that manages hundreds of billions of dollars invested by clients--including the president.

Since his election, the 43rd president and former Texas governor who made $15 million on the sale of his interest in the Texas Rangers baseball team, has placed his assets in a blind trust managed by Northern Trust of Chicago.

"The Northern Trust is his blind trust, and that's where they are located," says Erin Healy, a White House spokeswoman, explaining the Chicago P.O. box on the president's tax return. "That's it."

It's one of 10,000 boxes in the main Chicago post office, the Cardiss Collins facility, at 433 W. Harrison St., though only 7,000 boxes are in use, according to post office spokeswoman Judy Winiarz.

Sticklers for detail might notice that instructions for Internal Revenue Service Form 1040 explain how taxpayers should list their addresses.

"If you have a P.O. Box, see Page 16," the 1040 form advises. Page 16 is pretty clear: "Enter your box number only if your post office does not deliver mail to your home."

Yet the IRS maintains the president's papers are in order. And a spokesman for Northern Trust offers a standard response for questions about its clients, including the president: No comment.

Bush's legal residence is in Texas, which has no state income tax. He pays no state taxes in Illinois because he doesn't live in the state.

More than 40 million pieces of mail pass each month through boxes in the Cardiss Collins office, named for a Democrat and former congresswoman.

Northern Trust is a big customer, collecting its mail in bins. But there's no refund for Bush in Northern Trust's box this year.

The president and his wife, who reported a taxable income of $672,788 for the 2004 tax year, owed $207,307 in taxes. They overpaid by $38,534, according to a copy of their tax return released by the White House. Instead of seeking a refund, the Bushes applied that $38,534 to next year's tax bill.

They contributed $77,785 to charities last year, including the American Red Cross, Salvation Army and AmeriCares. Half their money came from wages and half from investments--investments in the hands of that discreet big bank.

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As a fellow Chicagoan, I just want to say how pleased I am to know that our president is living in a box on the city's near west side. I know that there are a number of Bush's neighbors who are also living in boxes, or other types of storage containers, in that area of the city, and I'm sure that they will feel a certain amount of pride knowing that they share at least that fact in common with the leader of the free world.