Tax Lawyer's Blog

“Nothing concentrates a man’s mind like the prospect of being hanged in the morning.”
- Samuel Johnson -
The New York Daily News reports that day-trader Marcos Esparza Bofill has been hit with a $172,000,000 IRS tax bill:
He failed as a day-trader and barely survived in New York on a beer budget, but Marcos Esparza Bofill has been hit [...]

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In April Florida lawmakers passed a bill authorizing the state’s first tax amnesty program (“Program”) since 2003. House Bill 5801 was approved by both chambers on April 30, 2010, the closing day of the Florida Legislature’s 60-day session. Governor Crist signed the bill into law on May 28th.
Here’s Ryan Tax Gateway’s press release on the bill [...]

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Ezra Klein of Newsweek writes that the IRS should expend it’s new resources¹ on going after tax cheats:
A report released by Citizens for Tax Justice shows that between 1995 and 2005, the IRS’s budget was slashed by a fifth. Between 1995 and 2003, its enforcement division lost 36 percent of its staff. They were barred [...]

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Forbes.com’s Ashlea Ebeling reports that after raising $1.4 billion from tax amnesties in 2009, states are again offering deals to delinquent taxpayers:
Call it “the return of the tax amnesties.” For the second year in a row, states are resorting to tax amnesties in the hope that delinquent taxpayers will help them plug their budget holes.
Last [...]

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Moms Mabley had more teeth than the health insurance mandate.
But Timothy Noah of Slate says IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman has a plan to enforce the health insurance mandate included in the recently passed healthcare bill:
Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman seemed to indicate that if you didn’t purchase health insurance and then refused to pay the fine, [...]

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It will surprise no one who regularly represents taxpayers that there are significant problems in the way the IRS processes collection cases. Now, courtesy of WebCPA, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), in a comprehensive study, has corroborated what most tax professionals already know (emphasis added):
[W]hen delinquent taxpayers respond to balance-due notices from the IRS, the [...]

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Otherwise rational people will believe almost any horror story involving the IRS.
Here are some examples I’ve encountered:
1.  a heart surgeon who told me he thought the IRS could put him in jail merely for owing money to the government;
2.  a securities lawyer who told me he was afraid that the IRS could seize his lawyer’s trust account for his personal tax debts; and
3.  a college [...]

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Back in 2008 I wrote about a group of Oklahoma college students who had bragged on MySpace about how much money they were making in their party business. Unfortunately for them, a state tax investigator was one of their “friends”:
Five current and former University of Central Oklahoma students bragged on MySpace that their party business had served thousands. Actually, a [...]

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In a story that’s been getting a lot of attention in the taxosphere, Bob Shallit of the Sacramento Bee tells about a car wash business that was visited by two IRS agents demanding payment of 4 cents of delinquent taxes:
It was every business person’s nightmare.
Arriving at Harv’s Metro Car Wash in midtown Wednesday afternoon were [...]

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Reporter: Hey, Willie, why do you rob all them banks?
Willie Sutton: ‘Cause that’s where the money is.
The New York Times reports that the Internal Revenue Service has lived up to its word and is intensifying its scrutiny of wealthy Americans:
The federal agency increased its audits of taxpayers who earned $1 million to $5 million by 33 [...]

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