Originally published on Forbes.com Apr 6th, 2013
The “release” of Wesley Snipes from federal prison has the tax blogosphere in a tizzy. Of course its not exactly a release. The Federal Inmate Locator still tracks Inmate 43355-018 placing him at CCM New York. Under the Residential Reentry program:
Pre-release inmates participating in release programming at an RRC remain in Federal custody while serving a sentence imposed by the U.S. District Court or DC Superior Court. Offenders under the supervision of U.S. Probation or the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA) are housed as a condition of their supervision. Accordingly, RRC staff monitors an inmate’s location and movement 24 hours/day.
The great thing about this for tax bloggers is that we will get to write about this again on July 19th, the actual release date of Mr. Snipes.
Frankly, most of what I know about Wesley Snipes is from reading Robert Wood’s posts about him. I finally accounted for this mental void about Mr. Snipes by checking a list of his movies on Wikipedia. Out of over forty, the only one that I had seen was White Men Can’t Jump
I probably need to get out more or widen my horizons.
What About Dr. Dino ?
The release of Mr. Snipes might be a time to reflect on whether any social purpose is served by sending people to prison for tax crimes. IRS Collections can make your life pretty miserable with its liens and levies. Generally, that is enough to discourage a lot of people from stepping too far out of line. There is another federal inmate of interest to my readership that might prove that some purpose is served by the fairly small number of incarcerations for tax related offenses. That would be Inmate 06452-017, currently at the Federal Correctional Institute in Berlin, New Hampshire with a projected release date of August 11, 2015 – Kent Hovind (a/k/a Dr. Dino). Mr. Hovind’s problems came from the way his “ministry” which promoted “Creation Science” was run. It is a somewhat complicated story on which I have done several posts.
Has Dr. Dino Learned His Lesson ?
That remains to be seen, but I think it is quite clear that his son, Eric Hovind has. Eric recently recorded an appeal for support for an organization that is a continuation of his father’s ministry. He is hoping to get 5,000 people to each pledge $10 per month for 12 months. He asks that you prayerfully consider his request and ask at least one friend to do the same. Here is the appeal
What struck me more than anything about the appeal is that Eric mentioned that among the struggles that the ministry has overcome is getting its 501(c)(3) status. That was a detail that his father scorned. Of course, I checked guidestar.org and found that God Quest, Inc d/b/a Creation Science Evangelism appears to be quite serious about being in compliance. On the Creation Today website “At A Glance” section they highlight their CPA firm, Brown Thornton Pacenta . I don’t think I have ever gotten that type of notice for preparing Form 990. Way to go BTP.
I would also argue that Eric’s compliance pretty well refutes the charge that the IRS was persecuting Kent Hovind for his creation science message. 46% of Americans believe that God created humans pretty much as they are now less than 10,000 years ago. Likely more than a couple of those people work for the IRS.
You can follow me on twitter @peterreillycpa.
Afternote
I got home last night determined to go off the tax reservation to write about a major cultural event I attended last night, but my readership was demanding that I make the Snipes/Hovind connection. Well readership might be a bit of an exaggeration. Actually it was my most devoted commenter Robert Baty, bane of the basketball ministers, who is passionate about creation science. He pointed me to Eric’s appeal and also this response which has about three times as many hits as the appeal itself.