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Category: Tax Crimes

Collateral consequences flow from tax fraud charges

Tax law is complex. Only a handful of people fully understand it and taxes are often controversial. While they pay for various services, who pays and how much are tricky policy questions. Tax laws, like any laws are violated for various reasons. Sometimes, the violations are motivated by greed, but […]

Tax Crimes

How the IRS took down Al Capone

Everyone has heard of notorious U.S. mobster Al Capone. But few may realize that it wasn’t his many crimes committed as a mob boss that landed him in federal prison – it was tax evasion. For years, state and federal prosecutors tried to charge and convict Capone for various crimes […]

Tax Crimes

IRS is not just the tax collector; it is also the tax police

The Internal Revenue Service is much more than just the federal agency that collects taxes. It has broad power to investigate individuals and businesses for evidence of potential tax crimes like fraud or evasion involving tax preparation, bankruptcy, banking, gaming, health care, underreporting, employment taxes, identity theft, money laundering, tax […]

Tax Crimes

‘Structuring’ suspicions and seized assets: An IRS about-face?

Under the Bank Secrecy Act, $10,000 is the threshold amount for triggering various reporting requirements for cash transactions. The law is supposed to deter money laundering by big-time drug dealers, organized crime figures or terrorist groups. Far too often, however, federal authorities accuse ordinary citizens of “structuring” their transactions, i.e., […]

Tax Crimes

New tool for criminal investigations: stingrays

The IRS continues to struggle with budget cuts, but it is far from toothless. In fact, the agency recently began using nasty new tools that can track cell phone location data by mimicking cell towers. These tools are called “stringrays” or cell-site simulators. Last week, the IRS commissioner went before […]

Tax Crimes