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Most Recent Posts

Ninth Circuit Rules Against War Tax Resister

Ninth Circuit Rules Against War Tax Resister

Just to be clear, because this can get a bit confusing, Ms. Boardman recognizes that the IRS can legally come and grab her money.  Her legal objection is to the practice of identifying war tax resisters as frivolous and attempting to suppress them.  In 2013, there was a field attorney advice issued that indicated that a proper return that is accompanied by a protest letter will not be subject to the $5,000 frivolous return penalty, but the frivolous position label still remains.  As best I can understand it, if the IRS just treated war tax resister returns the same way they treat any other return that comes in without full payment, there would not be an objection under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

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Kent Hovind Will Face A New Trial

Kent Hovind Will Face A New Trial

e and his co-defendant Paul John Hansen were charged with contempt of court, fraud and conspiracy because of filings that they made affecting property seized by the government.  The seizures related to Hovind’s earlier conviction.  The jury found Hovind and Hansen guilty of contempt, but was unable to reach a verdict on the more serious fraud and conspiracy charges.  Today federal prosecutor Tiffany Eggers has filed notice that the Government intends to proceed to retrial on the charges that the previous jury did not reach a verdict on.

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Is Talk Of Executive Action On Tax Loopholes Political Theater?

Is Talk Of Executive Action On Tax Loopholes Political Theater?

During the last year Presidential election carried interest was in the fore, because it was something that Mitt Romney had used to keep his taxes low.  The discussion about attacking carried interest with regulation was a staple of my blog during that period, as I considered the President kind of hypocritical for not doing that and also thought that the proposed legislation to address the issue was really awful.  At any rate here is how carried interest could be easily addressed by regulation.

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Tax Court Rules That Being Accommodation Party In Tax Shelter Is Hard Work

Tax Court Rules That Being Accommodation Party In Tax Shelter Is Hard Work

Jason Chai received a masters degree in architecture from a university in Massachusetts.  It was founded as a seminary for Congregational ministers and counts among its graduates Thomas Wentworth Higginson, one of the earlier biographers of Maragaret Fuller, the first woman granted admission to the college library, and Theodore John Kaczynski, the Unabomber.   The school, called Harvard, is about 40 miles east of Worcester.

That’s where Jason Chai met Andrew Beer.  Jason started his architecture career in Los Angeles, but moved to New York in 1999.  He stayed with his Harvard buddy for a while when he first moved to New York.  Andrew ended up marrying Jason’s cousin.  Jason has been a pretty successful architect , but that’s not what got him to Tax Court.  What got him to Tax Court was the best part time job I have ever heard of. He was hired by Andrew Beer.  Beer was in the investment business and managed to position himself and his company Bricolage into the center of the turn of the millennium tax shelter craze that Jack Townsend referred to as a massive raid on the treasury.

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Court Dismisses Suit Against Government From IRS Search That Led To Suicide

Court Dismisses Suit Against Government From IRS Search That Led To Suicide

The government does not now disagree with the general proposition that a partner is taxed on distributions removed from a partnership only to the extent that the distributions exceed the partner’s adjustedbasis inthepartnership. 26U.S.C. §731(a). In reviewing the written and oral exchanges at trial surrounding this issue, it is apparent that the district court (against all odds, given the manner in which it was argued) also understood this general legal proposition but simply did not agree that the evidence Simon sought to introduce was relevant to demonstrating his adjusted basis in the partnership.

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Don’t Sic IRS On Racist Frat Boys

Don’t Sic IRS On Racist Frat Boys

The Internal Revenue Service has about 90,000 people working for it.  Around 20,000 or so are actual enforcement people.  Those revenue agents and revenue officers are mostly trained as accountants.  They are tasked with collecting over two trillion dollars.  There are signs that they don’t have the resources do that job well enough.  TIGTA recently reported that the collections division which has over eleven million delinquent accounts in its inventory hesitates to take automated collection actions, since they are unable to handle the resulting phone calls.  In hundreds of thousands of cases, they know that alimony deductions do not match the income recorded by the recipients (You can guess which way that usually goes) but they can only investigate a small number of the discrepancies.

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