Category archives: Criminal Tax Cases

A taxpayer requested the trial court to instruct the jury that the willful failure to pay a tax is a lesser included offense of the charge of tax evasion. The trial court committed reversible error by refusing the taxpayer's requested instruction.

Generally, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are based upon tax loss. The definition normally does not include interest and penalties. However, when a taxpayer is convicted of a tax offense in which he attempted to evade payment of the tax, interest and penalties, the Court may include interest and penalties in its calculation of tax loss.

Physician who authored diet book with Atkins was found guilty of tax fraud.

Two Kentucky men were sentenced to between five and more than six years in prison today after pleading guilty in April and May to conspiring to defraud the United States, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

Defendant appeals his conviction on seven counts of making false statements to a bank. The false statements were made in order to carry out a tax evasion scheme. The Defendant appealed arguing that the law required that the false statement had to cause a loss to the bank or a liability. The Court disagreed and upheld the convictions.

Tennessee businessman and his partner were accused of bank fraud. Both men were found not guilty on all counts.

Plea agreements often call for the Defendant to plead guilty to certain counts of the indictment and for the government to dismiss the remaining counts. Occasionally, the government asserts that the Defendant has violated the plea agreement and the United States seeks to re-indict the counts it has dismissed. However, if this occurs after the defendant has been sentenced and has served his sentence, due process requires the government to move for the Court to declare the defendant in violation of the plea agreement and grant the government leave to convene the grand jury to re-indict the defendant on the charges previously dismissed. The government cannot summarily declare the defendant in breach of the plea agreement and re-indict him without a determination by the court. This situation occurred in the following tax case.

The recommended sentence under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for one or more tax violations is largely determined by the calculated tax loss. State taxes may be included in the calculation. Cash expenditures, under certain circumstances, may be excluded from the calculation. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines do not make a distinction between felony tax violations and misdemeanor tax violations. As a result, a taxpayer found not guilty of the felony counts but guilty of the misdemeanor counts may serve the same amount of time as if convicted for a felony. This occurs when the Court orders that the misdemeanor sentences be served consecutively instead of concurrently.

In case charging wire fraud, tax evasion, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering, the Government established that Defendant committed a fraudulent scheme to acquire money but, did not present evidence that proved that the Defendant attempted to conceal the funds to evade taxes. Further, to prove charges of wire fraud, proof of use of the internet alone is insufficient to establish that information was sent across state lines and, to prove aggravated identity theft, the Government must prove the Defendant knew the victim was a real person.

The United States District Court Has Both Subject Matter and Personal Jurisdiction Over a Taxpayer Who was Indicted of Tax Violations in the District Where theTaxpayer Lives and from Which He Filed the Tax Returns in Issue.