Lots of those losers will be Democrats. And if they feel like sticking it to the rich one last time, at least they can say a Reagan OMB Director and Bill Gates are on their side!
[via TaxProf]
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Meticulous Records Save Billionaire $27 Million in Taxes
So you’re Julian Robertson and you’re a billionaire right? You’re on the Forbes list &mdash right behind that cheater Raj but ahead of Wilbur Ross! &mdash and you don’t have many worries.
Except for the City of New York trying to nab $27 million dollars from you! Subways stations falling apart, government employees being laid off. Bah. That’s over 1% of your net worth (based on Forbes’ latest count) and you’ll be damned if the City is going to get their grubby mitts on it.
WSJ:
At issue was Mr. Robertson’s whereabouts on four days during [2000]: April 15, July 23, July 31 and Nov. 16. The other 362 days were accounted for, with documentary proof of 183 days spent in the city and 179 spent outside. The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance argued that because he didn’t have documentary proof for the four days, he was therefore a resident and owed city taxes of $26,792,341.
Four days. Four days standing in between you and $27 million. As we mentioned, it’s not like this is a substantial amount but this was one of those qualitative over quantitative decisions: “$27 million, an amount important enough to the hedge-fund manager that he and his staff spent hours and developed a complicated calendar system to track his whereabouts.”
See? It’s the principle. Robertson is bending over backwards to play by the rules since he once told an assistant — who meticulously tracks New York City days and non-New York City days — that crossing the GW Bridge at 11:45 pm is considered a New York City day.
Between the human GPS and Robertson’s wife saying there was no way he was in the City — she doesn’t stand for him being ‘in her hair’ prior to vacay — the court was convinced that he wasn’t a New York City resident. Can’t say Robertson didn’t work for it.
In Tax Case, 4 Days Save Robertson $27 Million [WSJ]
John Kerry Is Paying the Taxes on His Yacht, Would Appreciate It if Everyone Changed the Subject
Talk about wearing the guy thin.
Moral of the story? Call for an investigation of a wealthy guy – a wealthy Senator – with a wealthier wife and he’ll gladly cut a check to get you to shut the hell up.
Doug Shulman Takes It as a Compliment That the IRS Is the ‘Go-to’ Government Agency
If you’re a member of the AICPA the biggest benefit you enjoy is not the prestige, not the certificate that you have mounted on your wall but the Journal of Accountancy that shows up in your mail every month. It’s really solid that your firm shells out good money on an annual basis so you can add new Excel tips to your spreadsheet wizard repertoire.
JofA manages to talk to a number of high profile as well, which you would expect from a behemoth professional journal. Case in point, when we received the latest month’s issue we couldn’t help but get a little giddy seeing Doug “Help me, help you” Shulman. We flipped to the Q&A immediately after seeing his handsome mug on the cover only to find the Commish’s picture at right. It makes us think that he’s channeling Monty Burns, which some of you probably find appropriate.
The Q&A is pretty much what you would expect, touching on the new preparer regulations, “We ran a very open, transparent, public dialogue about this,” to threatening offshore tax scofflaws, “The U.S. government is getting very serious about rooting out offshore tax evasion,” and warning whistleblowers not to expect that money any time soon, “[T]his could take multiple years to get the awards out. But I’m a big fan of the program.”
A couple of more interesting statements, include how excited Dougie is that all the assignments that other government agencies don’t want, get dumped on the service, “it’s…a big compliment that we’re seen as a ‘go-to’ agency in government.”
That being said, this particular interview was certainly conducted prior to the passage of the healthcare reform bill and no mention of the IRS’ role in enforcement (or lack thereof) was brought up. Maybe if the JofA had seen the Bill O’Reilly/Anthony Weiner throwndown it would have been a stop the presses moment.
The only other thing worth noting is that pizza parlors around the country might want to tighten up the ship in the coming months, “We will build features into our technology system so if we see, say, a pizza parlor that says they had $90,000 of sales last year and it shows that they had $85,000 of credit card sales and we know that pizzerias have a lot of cash sales, that will be a red flag. We’ll use it to better target our audits, to see where there’s potential noncompliance, and then we’ll use it to better focus our resources.”
Maybe the Commish is just giving an example of what a red flag is but using this particular example rather than say, a celebrity, seem peculiar. Just leave Di Fara alone, okay?
Tax From the Top: Q&A With IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman [Journal of Accountancy]