Tax Lawyer's Blog

WebCPA reports Wesley Snipes is appealing his sentence of 3 years imprisonment after his 2008 conviction for failing to file his 1999, 2000 and 2001 federal income tax returns:

Snipes’s lawyers are claiming that the trial should have occurred in New York instead of Florida, as they had argued before the first trial. In addition, Snipes’s attorneys argued that the sentence focused too much on deterrence as a way to dissuade other tax protestors from following his lead. 

[Snipes's attorneys argue that] Florida venue interfered with Snipes constitutional rights as he lived in New York. Snipes had earlier claimed that the Ocala, Fla., venue was a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity.

When a guy starts yanking out the race card, you know he’s guilty. FN 1

In the sentencing phase of the trial, U.S. Attorneys Robert O’Neill, M. Scotland Morris and Jeffrey A. McLellan filed on behalf of the United States a Sentencing Memorandum Regarding Defendant Wesley Trent Snipes in which they said:

Criminal tax prosecutions play a vital role in our nation’s tax system because our system of self-reported tax liability depends upon citizens’ being assured that those who do not honestly report their income and pay their taxes will be appropriately punished.  In the defendent, Wesley Snipes, the Court is presented with a wealthy, famous, and inveterate tax scofflaw. If ever a tax offender was deserving of being held acountable to the maximum extent for his criminal wrongdoing, Snipes is that defendant.

At trial, the government proved that Snipes failed to report more than $14,000,000 of gross income by not filing his tax returns in 1999, 2000 and 2001. In addition, the government argued that Snipes had also intended not to file his tax returns for the years 2002, 2003 and 2004, which would have resulted in an underreporting of additional gross income of $23,000,000. Thus, for sentencing purposes, the total gross income Snipes either evaded paying taxes on or attempted to evade paying taxes on comes to $37,000,000. FN 2

The tax loss for the counts of conviction – the failure to file for tax years 1999, 2000, 2001 - is $2,771, 682. The tax loss for all counts included in the indictment – the failure to file for the tax years 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 – is $15,644,490.

These numbers are gargantuan and put Snipes in the top 1% of the top 1% of criminal defendants in terms of the amount of the government’s tax loss.

According to the sentencing memorandum, Snipes’s worth is well in excess of $25,000,000 so he certainly has the ability to pay his lawyers a lot of dough to try to keep him out of jail. Naturally, Snipes’s counsel will continue to fashion suspect arguments and file meaningless appeals briefs as long as their client continues to pay them for it.

But Snipes is wasting his money.

First of all, the Florida jury acquitted him of the most serious charges contained in the indictment (the tax fraud charges) so I can’t see how an appeals judge can find that this same jury was swayed by anti-black sentiment in convicting him of the lesser charge of failure to file tax returns. Second, as the prosecution pointed out in its sentencing memorandum, given the excessively large amount of tax loss involved, Snipes sentence of 36 months imprisonment and a $5,000,000 fine is actually a light one.

Footnotes:

FN 1.  My wife’s family lives in Ocala, which is about 150 miles northwest of my home in Orlando. It is one of the most diverse communities in central Florida. To say that the KKK is rampant there is a ridiculous lie. While I have no doubt that there are some toothless goons who still like to play games with white hoods and burning crosses, to say that any 21st century American city is a “hotbed” of KKK activity is crazy talk. Snipes’s attorneys must think this is still the 1960’s.

FN 2.  Federal sentencing rules are quite complex, but for purposes of this blog post all you need to know is that the sentencing Judge may take into account all relevant conduct that it finds to be true by a preponderance of the evidence even when related to acquitted conduct (in this case the acquitted conduct was Snipes’s failure to file tax returns for 2002, 2003 and 2004).

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