House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) should by the year’s end publicly release his federal tax returns for all years under investigation by the House Committee on Standards and pay IRS penalties and interest on past violations, or step down as Chairman until his ethics investigation is ended, according to House Republican Conference Secretary John Carter.

President Barack Obama and Carter both released their tax returns in response to questions on House Disclosure forms errors, while Rangel has refused to provide his for any year under investigation, raising suspicions of additional tax evasions beyond his failure to report or pay taxes on a decade of rental income from his Caribbean resort home.

Carter says if Rangel fails to comply, he will move again in January for a House vote to forcibly remove the Chairman. Rangel has been under investigation since 2008 for tax evasion; using rent-controlled low-income apartments in New York for campaign purposes; attending Caribbean resorts at lobbyist expense; and using his chairmanship to grant tax favors for campaign donors and contributors to Rangel-affiliated organizations.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has refused to take action since the scandals became public, in direct contradiction to her 2006 campaign pledge to conduct the “most ethical congress in history.”

But Carter, a former Texas judge, says the ongoing scandal goes far beyond congressional ethics.

“This is about whether the wealthy and politically powerful are treated the same under the law as their fellow Americans,” says Carter. “Every tax attorney in the country will tell you that if a normal taxpayer committed the violations of Chairman Rangel or U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, they would be assessed serious penalties and interest, if not charged with criminal tax evasion. This is about defending the Rule of Law itself and will not end until all Americans are once again afforded equal protection as required by the U.S. Constitution. Either Charlie Rangel and Tim Geithner pay up, or we need to change the law so that nobody has to.”

Carter in 2009 introduced the Rangel Rule, HR 735, and the Geithner Penalty Waiver Act, HR 4172, which would extend to all U.S. taxpayers the penalty-free IRS treatment enjoyed thus far by Rangel and Geithner for flagrant tax evasion.