The man chosen by President-elect Obama to run the US Treasury failed to pay $34,000 in taxes over several years in the first half of the decade.

The disclosure of the unpaid tax bill of Timothy Geithner, who is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will complicate a Senate Finance Committee hearing into his nomination as US Treasury Secretary.

It may also add some bumps into what has so far been a relatively seamless transition between the Bush and Obama presidencies.

The unpaid taxes, which relate to a period when Mr Geithner worked as a senior official at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and a separate issue regarding the employment of a housekeeper without a work permit, emerged in papers released yesterday by the Senate Finance Committee.

Max Baucus, the Democrat chairman of the committee, said he still hoped that the nomination of Mr Geithner would be confirmed in time for the inauguration of the President on Tuesday.

He said: "These errors were not intentional; they were honest mistakes."

Senior Republicans on the ommittee, including Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, were undecided yesterday whether the matter was serious or would be glossed over.

Orrin Hatch, a Republican senator from Utah, said that he continued to support Mr Geithner.

According to Senate Finance Committee material, Mr Geithner failed to pay taxes on income earned during his employment at the IMF between 2001 and 2003.

Three years later the US Internal Revenue Service notified him that he owed $14,847 in taxes and a further $2,383 in interest on the unpaid tax for the years 2003 and 2004, money which was then paid by Mr Geithner.

However, the Obama transition team subsequently discovered that he had left an unpaid bill relating to his employment in 2001 and 2002, a sum of $19,176 in back taxes and $6,794 in interest for 2001 and 2002.

The bill was paid several days before Mr Obama announced his choice of Treasury Secretary, according to the committee documents.

In total, the amount of taxes owed but not promptly paid by Mr Geithner was $34,023 between 2001 and 2004.

According to the Obama camp, the errors in tax filing are common among US employees of international organisations such as the IMF which does not deduct taxes owed by US employees to their government.

The matter of the housekeeper, regarded as less serious by the Senate committee, relates to Mr Geithner's failure to notice that a housekeeper he employed during 2004 and 2005 did not have the correct employment papers for a period of three months.

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