Tax Lawyer's Blog

Stephen Hudak of the Orlando Sentinel writes about the criminal tax conviction of Wesley Snipes’ tax advisor, Eddie Ray Kahn: 

While Wesley Snipes fights to stay out of prison, a Lake County tax protester earned an additional 20 years behind bars for advising the movie star and 4,000 other clients how to beat the Internal Revenue Service.

Eddie Ray Kahn, 67, who operated a “tax defier” organization from a rented second-floor office in downtown Mount Dora, and three other Florida men were convicted of conspiracy in federal court in Washington.

All worked for Kahn’s American Rights Litigators, which prosecutors described in a sentencing memorandum as “the Walmart of tax fraud,” selling bargain-priced schemes to help people dodge tax obligations.

Kahn was convicted as a co-defendant in Snipes’ trial in 2008 and received a 10-year sentence in that case. But federal court records say his now-defunct organization, which operated for seven years as American Rights Litigators or the Guiding Light of God Ministries, had a presence in all 50 states and more than 4,800 paying members in the U.S.

That anyone in full control of his faculties would follow someone like Kahn is nothing short of amazing. My guess is that he appeals to three types of people:

1. Those who are greedy and willing to delude themselves that anything that saves them money must be true.
2. Those who think the government in general and the IRS in particular are out to get them.
3. Those who are dumber than Paris Hilton’s publicist.

Here’s more Kahn lunacy from Hudak:

Kahn’s organization manufactured, printed and, for as little as $25, sold more than a thousand “bills of exchange,” worthless checklike documents that American Rights Litigators and its clients sent to the IRS in purported payment of federal tax obligations.

He also advocated that clients apply to become “overseers” — one-person, nonprofit religious corporations that would allow them to enjoy special tax benefits available to bona fide religious groups and church leaders.

Kahn called himself the “Overseer of the Guiding Light of God Ministries.” He also filed a vow of poverty with the Lake County Clerk of Courts and claimed that he had given all of his assets to his personal ministry.

The government, citing records that an agent found in computers at the Mount Dora office, claims that Kahn and his organization intended to cheat the U.S. out of $1.1 billion in federal taxes owed by its clients.

Those clients included Snipes as well as recently imprisoned tax-defying dentist Mark S. Maggert of Fruitland Park and other professionals who subscribed to American Rights Litigators’ newsletters, visited its website or attended Kahn’s U.S. seminars, one of which was titled “Having Fun With the Tax Man.”

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