Upon returning from her trip to New York City and the United Nations General Assembly, President Laura Chinchilla announced that she accepted the resignation of yet another public official over tax irregularities revealed by investigative journalists from La Nacion.

The President’s announcement was made at 10:40 pm upon landing at the Juan Santamaria International Airport. La Nacion broke the story at midnight.

Francisco Villalobos Brenes is now the former Chief Tax Collector. His resignation comes just one day after his superior, former Minister of the Treasury Fernando Herrero, quit his post due to the results of two scathing investigations by La Nacion on his properties and business dealings.

Herrero is hardly the only public official whose tax records were investigated by La Nacion. The prominent national newspaper looked at the records of several Ministers and published their tardiness and delinquencies in great detail. The investigation and subsequent publication sent public officials scrambling to update the value on their homes and other real estate holdings. By not updating the value of their properties, the officials named in the investigation deprived the government and taxpayers from revenue that could have been used to deflect the growing budget deficit.

La Nacion did not stop at investigating real estate values. Journalists also looked into the tax records of Procesos, Investigacion y Asesoria CA, a private consultancy firm established by Herrero and his wife Florisabel Rodriguez in the late 1990s. After reviewing records, La Nacion found that the consulting firm had under-reported earnings in 2009. Ms. Rodriguez, who was an aide to President Laura Chinchilla, tendered her resignation along with her husband.

The investigation into the income and unpaid taxes by Procesos moved former Chief Tax Collector Villalobos to order an inquiry into the matter. Shortly after The Costa Rica Star published an article that looked into the work performed by the Procesos consulting firm, an alert Facebook reader left a comment and a link to a new article by La Nacion. That new article indicated that, while Villalobos filed his tax return on time in 2008, he did not pay the amount due. The Chief Tax Collector owed more than $3,000 in personal income taxes before he resigned.

Writing for La Nacion, journalists Giannina Segniniy and Ernesto Rivera explained that Villalobos contacted the newspaper by e-mail and explained the oversight: “It was an inexcusable mistake on my part. The amount due in 2008 was not paid due to an unforgivable personal mishap.” Villalobos also submitted evidence of payment of all taxes, interests and penalties due.

While it may seem like a comedy of errors, a case of the blind leading the naked, or the proverbial calling of the pot to the kettle, the numerous comments left by readers of La Nacion indicate that Ticos are not amused by the recent developments and are demanding closer scrutiny and enforcement of revenue and tax collection practices in Costa Rica.