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Court Agrees Lois Lerner’s Group Did Not Trigger Individual Audits
The problem with that type of anecdotal evidence is that every year some number of people are going to be audited for the first time. You would expect that some number of those audited in say 2011 were active in the Tea Party or similar groups.
You are never going to convince most of those people that it was just luck of the draw. It would be very hard to make a statistical inference about whether Tea Party affiliation or something like that affected individual audit probability, since it is hard to define the group that the sample is being drawn from and it is possible, even likely, that the people who became involved in the conservative causes were people who already had a higher than average probability of being audited.
Kent Hovind Celebrated At Welcome Home Party
Ben Sheffler made it to Kent Hovind's Welcome Home Party on July 11, 2015 and reported on the event. After nearly a decade, Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, Fla....
Raw Story Notices When Kent Hovind Seen With Jim Bob Duggar
One of the mysteries of the Hovind case has been its failure to break into mainstream media. Hovind made the rounds of the right wing conspiracy alternative media, most notably Alex Jones, which embraced his religious persecution narrative. There has been some light coverage by the Pensacola New Journal, which had to pull its reporter from the courtroom in March to cover a tragic helicopter crash.
Kent Hovind’s Battle With IRS – Collateral Damage
Hovind and his co-defendant, Creation Science Evangelism trustee, Paul Hansen took steps to protect the properties, since they believed that the seizure would ultimately be reversed. Those steps were what gave rise to this years trial for mail fraud, conspiracy and contempt of court. The jury did not reach a verdict on most of the more serious charges but found both Hovind and Hansen guilty of contempt. The government ultimately did not proceed with retrial. Hovind’s contempt conviction was dismissed by Judge Rodgers, but Hansen is still awaiting sentencing.
Anthony Jaworski purchased one of the trust properties from the federal government. Kent Hovind has expressed some sympathy for him, since Kent expects to regain the property. Paul Hansen had, apparently unbeknownst to Kent Hovind, sent Jaworski a letter warning him that he did not really have good title to the property and was obligated to pay the trust rent. The letter was used as evidence at the trial and Jaworski was called to testify.
Will IRS Force Gay Marriage On Conservative Churches?
The cause of the immediate controversy is the inelegant answer which the Solicitor General offered to Justice Alito’s question about the potential application of Bob Jones to churches which decline to perform same-sex marriages. For the short-run, it is implausible that either the IRS or the Obama Administration will pursue this issue. For the long-run, those religious institutions which refuse to perform same-sex marriages are correct to assume that some same-sex marriage advocates will press for the loss of tax-exempt status of churches, synagogues and mosques which decline to recognize such marriages.
Kent Hovind Homecoming
I don’t doubt Hovind’s sincerity. Among the “authorities” he cites is Irwin Schiff. Doctor Ward Dean, who was kind of one of Hovind’s Pensacola anti-IRS battle buddies and a friend of Don Camacho from their service together in the Escambia Country Militia, continues to believe that the theories are correct even after serving a long prison sentence for following them.
Something Borrowed Makes You Blue – Student Debt And Joint Returns
From a policy point of view, the current system, if you can call it that, makes no sense at all. The message graduate schools can now send to a highly indebted student is that further increases in debt never have to be paid back, so there is no point in being price-conscious. It is as if we have consigned an entire generation to be in a permanent state of work-out.
Jeffrey Webber’s Cayman Insurance Shelter Nixed By Tax Court
Mr. Webber established a grantor trust that purchased “private placement” variable life insurance policies insuring the lives of two elderly relatives (That’s the ghoulish part). The premiums paid to Lighthouse Capital Insurance Co. (Cayman Islands) after deduction for mortality risk and administrative charge were placed in separate accounts. The accounts were segregated and invested in start-up companies that Mr. Webber was intimately familiar with. They did quite well.
Mario Biaggi’s Criminal Case Followed By Tax Travails
Biaggi appealed to the Second Circuit, objecting to the failure of the IRS to release special agent reports that were submitted to the Grand Jury and on the valuation issue, but had not luck.
An interesting point that I have not been able to determine is whether the IRS ended up whipsawing the Biaggi family. The assessment for Mario Biaggi not reporting the income from the grant of Wedtech stock relied on the six year statute. So was it too late for Richard Biaggi to claim a refund for the income that he had over-reported? Perhaps a protective refund claim went in early in the game.
SpongeBob SquarePants In A Tax Case!
The Greenbergers also tried an estoppel argument maintaining that since the Department of Justice had notified them that they might be victims of a crime, that the government could not now argue that they were not theft victims. That just didn’t work because Ohio law requires a privity between the thief and the victim.
There is probably not much of a tax planning point here since nobody plans to get defrauded. The fraud story is a really good one, though. I can’t rate it that highly since the basis was simply inflating sales, but I do think they should get some extra credit for including an animated character.