President's budget targets tax deniers

[Demosthenes]

DOJ Budget Plan Seeks $2.9 Million to Fund ‘Operation National Tax Defier'
Posted May 7, 2009

President Obama's fiscal year 2010 budget proposal called for giving the Justice Department's Tax Division $2.9 million to fund “Operation National Tax Defier,” according to a fact sheet issued May 7.

The program would add 18 positions, including 13 attorneys, to increase the department's ability to bring tax collection suits against tax defiers, the fact sheet said.

“Since January, 2001, the Tax Division has used both civil and criminal enforcement tools against tax defiers, with great success,” DOJ said.

Criminal prosecutors in the division and in U.S. attorneys offices have obtained guilty verdicts or guilty pleas in more than 200 tax defier cases, it said.

The division has also sought and obtained civil injunctions barring more than 90 tax defier promoters and return preparers from continuing to encourage other taxpayers to violate the tax laws, according to the fact sheet.

The fact sheet, Combating Financial Fraud and Protecting the Federal Fisc Fact Sheet, can be found at

http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/2010factsheets ... f-fisc.pdf

[Gregg]

Are they gonna call it "The CTC Division"?

[grixit]

TP: You can't tax me!

Obama: Yes we can!

[SteveSy]

That's not very smart....all TP's are pool cleaners and live in broken down mobile homes. Kinda senseless to spend so much money to catch a bunch of people who would have otherwise had to pay nothing and received EIC to boot. I think its really part of the stimulus, hire a bunch of people to collect nothing, send people to prison so we need more guards and prisons built. Come to think of it, it's a great plan!

Hope all you CPA's and lawyers that are making the bucks like those extra taxes you're gonna have to pay to imprison all those people who you are now going to have to support. Thank goodness we're gonna teach them a lesson, its better to file and not only get all your money back but since you filed correctly you now qualify for EIC! Be sure to tell them to check their mailbox for those stimulus checks also!

[Doktor Avalanche]

Don't worry, Steve...we'll manage.

Part of the problem is that you incorrectly assume that the TPs out there have significant numbers - they don't.

[Red Cedar PM]

That's not very smart....all TP's are pool cleaners and live in broken down mobile homes. Kinda senseless to spend so much money to catch a bunch of people who would have otherwise had to pay nothing and received EIC to boot. I think its really part of the stimulus, hire a bunch of people to collect nothing, send people to prison so we need more guards and prisons built. Come to think of it, it's a great plan!

Hope all you CPA's and lawyers that are making the bucks like those extra taxes you're gonna have to pay to imprison all those people who you are now going to have to support. Thank goodness we're gonna teach them a lesson, its better to file and not only get all your money back but since you filed correctly you now qualify for EIC! Be sure to tell them to check their mailbox for those stimulus checks also!

From a BNA article on the subject:

“Over the past four years, the [DOJ's Tax] Division, on average, has returned $14 to the Treasury for every $1 spent on attorney salaries and expenses,” DOJ said. “Further, this amount represents only the actual dollars recovered and returned to the Treasury; it does not include the immeasurable deterrent effect of successful affirmative civil enforcement litigation. The requested program enhancement will establish a baseline for this initiative.”

Seems that the program is paying for itself, Stevie.

[SteveSy]

Guess TP's aren't pool cleaners and live in broken down mobile homes. They're actually regular people.

[Demosthenes]

Hey, if you can't nominate a cheat to a cabinet position, squish him like a bug!

[Demosthenes]

Guess TP's aren't pool cleaners and live in broken down mobile homes. They're actually regular people.

People who live in mobile homes and clean pools are regular people, Steve.

[Demosthenes]

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=4232

Yes, there are plans afoot to double then quadruple the enforcement budget.

Seems it was on the news wires for a while.

Those were articles about the IRS. This thread is about beefing up a narrowly focused division at the DOJ.

[The Observer]

That's not very smart....all TP's are pool cleaners and live in broken down mobile homes. Kinda senseless to spend so much money to catch a bunch of people who would have otherwise had to pay nothing and received EIC to boot. I think its really part of the stimulus, hire a bunch of people to collect nothing, send people to prison so we need more guards and prisons built. Come to think of it, it's a great plan!

And you are making wrong assumptions about who exactly is going to get caught up in any increased IRS enforcement. A simple moment of reflection about the number of cases of TPs being prosecuted over the last 5 years (and discussed in agonizing detail) would remind you that approximately all of these cases were situations where the TP either was involved in promoting and benefiting from a scam (Schiff, Meredith), putting themselves out in public as opposing tax laws (Simkanin), asking for the government to prosecute them (Rose) or were committing egregious crimes in their TP activity (Browns). In other words these convictions had nothing to do with a pool cleaner elgible for EIC getting charged.

There is a very good and legitimate reason why these people got nailed and not the pool cleaner TPs. They made it very easy for the government to build a case that would get a conviction in front of a jury. They had affluent or comfortable lifestyles, they left a trail of evidence so wide that it couldn't be covered up and they had ended up involving and harming other people in their scheming. Government attornies are not going to waste their time hauling in the pool cleaner TP whose likely defense will be that he was poor, stupid, living on the edge and desperate to change his situation. Cases like that only engender jury sympathy and typically result in the jury letting the pool cleaner off.

So you are not going to see TP pool cleaners being hauled off to jail anytime soon, Steve. What you are going to see is more of the con artists and affluent scammers being targeted and culled that previously were on waiting lists.

[Judge Roy Bean]

...What you are going to see is more of the con artists and affluent scammers being targeted and culled that previously were on waiting lists.

Lists?

[The Observer]

...What you are going to see is more of the con artists and affluent scammers being targeted and culled that previously were on waiting lists.

Lists?

You know, those mental lists that prosecutors and investigators keep while they are busy frying bigger fish.

[SteveSy]

So you are not going to see TP pool cleaners being hauled off to jail anytime soon, Steve. What you are going to see is more of the con artists and affluent scammers being targeted and culled that previously were on waiting lists.

I was being facetious...I like to poke at Joey, its fun.

[Joey Smith]

That's not very smart....all TP's are pool cleaners and live in broken down mobile homes.

I still believe it is true that the vast majority of tax protestors do have low-paying jobs and little in the way of assets (just look at Weston), but the IRS and DOJ do need to be much quicker on the draw to get rid of the promoters. There's no reason why Schiff, Rose, etc., should have been allowed to sell their junk as long as they did.