You know, I often joke that my cats Buck and Cash are interns, assistants, accountants, and CEOs of the fictional company that is my home office. But this guy clearly took that too far when he used his pets to avoid taxes:
[Scientist Mathew] Zuckerman's tax-avoidance schemes included naming his dog and cat as directors of a company called "Hyperpanel University," a Nevada business, which was listed as the owner of a $1.2 million Woody Creek home near Aspen. The home was actually owned by Mathew and Sandra Zuckerman. Another shell business owned the deed of their $1.8 million Tuluca Lake, Calif., mansion.
"This is an extremely serious offense. … There is a deviousness to all of that as well," Blackburn said. "Dr. Zuckerman is one lucky man that he was only charged with one offense."
The judge told Sandra Zuckerman that although her husband was mostly to blame, "you are not entirely an innocent spouse."
Forget the wife, are the dog and cat eligible for innocent pet relief?
Zuckerman will pay the IRS $693,706 in restitution and do two years in prison. The dog and cat were not available for comment.
Our favorite corner of the Federal bureaucracy, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, has come out with a new report today that admits that the IRS current method of sending notices and letters is costing us – taxpayers – millions because so much of it is undeliverable. This happens for various reasons, including nearly 25% of instances where recipients may or may not have physically threatened their mail carrier.
TIGTA Report: Current Practices Are Preventing a Reduction in the Volume of Undeliverable Mail
The Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) current method of sending notices and letters is costing taxpayers millions of dollars because it results in a large amount of undeliverable mail, according to a report publicly released today by the Treasury Office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).
The IRS sends out approximately 200 million notices and letters each year to individual and business taxpayers and their representatives at a cost of $141 million. In 2009, approximately 19.3 million of those mailings were returned to the IRS at an estimated cost of $57.9 million.
TIGTA assessed whether the IRS can reduce the volume of undeliverable mail. Its review of a random sample of 331 notices and letters returned to the IRS found that 37 percent were undeliverable because of invalid or nonexistent addresses; 35 percent had the wrong address; 24 percent were refused by the taxpayer or the taxpayer was not at home to receive the certified or registered mail; and four percent were returned for other reasons.
TIGTA recommended that the IRS allow taxpayers to submit a change of address over the telephone and improve its systems for identifying known bad addresses. TIGTA also recommended implementing a standardized procedure for processing undeliverable mail.
“The Internal Revenue Service needs to take advantage of the latest technologies and systems now available to cut down on undeliverable mail, thereby saving the taxpayers money,” said J. Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
In response, the IRS agreed with all of TIGTA’s recommendations and has begun the process of planning to implement them.
So, in other words, the IRS is partly responsible for several instances of the following:
Since Jesse James’ tax lien is relatively small — $3,918 — you can probably chalk this up to a mistake. However, since the taxes are related to 2007, could it be that it was an oversight? A mistake? Poor judgment?
Poor judgment akin to say, inviting a tattoo model/stripper/rumored white supremacist into your bike shop to cheat on your wife? Is that sort of the same thing?
Oh Joe Francis, why won’t you just take your Douche of the Decade trophy and ride off into the sunset?
Actually we know why. The IRS froze $22 million of Douche of D’s money because he still owes them $23 million for taxes owed in 2001, 2002, and 2003. J. Fran would not stand for such aggression and, being the savvy tax guy that he is, sued the Service to get access to his accounts. He concluded that the IRS was just bent out of shape that he got out of additional jail time.
The IRS claims that the real reason that they’re freezing DoD’s assets is that he tried moving the money offshore after his plea. And unless you’re Joe Francis, you know is not such best course of action these days. IRS can freeze ‘Girls Gone Wild’ money [Don’t Mess With Taxes]
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