Soccer star Lionel Messi is one of the most celebrated athletes in the world, with an income to match. His position on the field is forward, not defender or goalie. But he now finds himself playing defense against criminal tax-evasion charges in Spain. In this two-part post, we will take […]
Category: Tax Evasion
Millions of U.S. taxpayers are scrambling this weekend to get their taxes filed. The filing deadline is April 18 in Texas and most of the rest of the country. (Taxpayers in two New England states get an extra day because of a holiday called Patriot Day.) If you live abroad, […]
For the last few years, more and more U.S. citizens and green card holders have chosen to give up their passports rather than comply with increasingly burdensome offshore account reporting requirements. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), in particular, has become a major burden for many expatriates. We wrote […]
Do you really have to report illegal income to the IRS? Yes, it’s counter-intuitive. But the answer is yes. Of course, compliance with this requirement is not common. But some taxpayers do choose to report income from illegal activities. As we will explain in this post, one reason for doing […]
In the first part of this post, we began discussing the issue of underreported income. We noted that the IRS has a program that automatically sends out notices to taxpayers when information from other sources indicates that income may be underreported on a tax return. In this part of the […]
We live in a society that tries hard to find technological solutions to problems. This attempt is not always successful, but it has deep roots in the culture. In tax compliance, one way in which the search for a technical solution is present is the Automated Underreporter Program (AUP). The […]
Bankruptcy is by no means a sure-fire way to evade the IRS. An octogenarian widow of a Texas billionaire is finding this out now. In this post, we will discuss the case of Caroline “Dee” Wyly, against whom the Internal Revenue Agency is seeking a $386 million tax fraud penalty. […]
Tax law is filled with abbreviations. IRS of course stands for Internal Revenue Service. OIC stands for offer in compromise. FBAR stands for Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (now also known as FinCEN form 114) and so on. The newest abbreviation is CRS. (No, not CVS, the national […]
The IRS has served John Doe summonses to a number of banks in Belize, seeking information about American account holders, as the U.S. federal government continues its onslaught against offshore tax evasion. Long known as a tax haven, Belize has been a popular destination for wealthy individuals seeking to avoid […]
In the first part of this post, we noted that the Criminal Investigation (CI) division of the IRS is involved in the investigation of several financial crimes that do not directly involve tax law. These crimes include fraud, money laundering and violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. In our September […]