From Paul Caron: Kwon: Four Difficult Ethical Questions for IRS Lawyers Michelle Kwon (Texas Tech), The Tax Man’s Ethics: Four of the Hardest Ethical Questions for an IRS Lawyer, 9 Cardozo Pub. L. Pol’y & Ethics J. 371 (2011): The article explores the disagreement, particularly among academics, about whether government lawyers have greater obligations to [...]
Tags: Court Cases · IRS procedure
James Maule of Mauled Again has written an excellent post titled Expending Tax Dollars to Litigate Settled Tax Questions. In it he discusses the Eleventh Circuit’s affirmance, in Campbell v. Comr., No. 10-13677 (11th Cir. 2011), of an earlier Tax Court decision (134 T.C. No. 3 (2010)). The Tax Court concluded, following an earlier decision, that a [...]
Tags: Court Cases · Gross Income
I just read an excellent post by Kay Bell on innocent spouse relief. Here’s how Kay frames the issue, but to see how it all ends you’ll have to read the entire post: Leonard Harbin filed a petition with the Tax Court seeking relief from joint and several liability for his and his now ex-wife’s [...]
Tags: Court Cases · Innocent Spouse Relief
Paul Caron has the latest on Wesley Snipes’ Eleventh Circuit appeal: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit today filed this 7-page opinion denying Wesley Snipe’s motions for a new trial and to interview jurors who convicted him on Feb. 1, 2008 of three counts of willfully failing to file tax returns. United [...]
Tags: Court Cases · News · Tax Crimes
IRS penalties are supposed to be assessed against a taxpayer only when his non-compliance is due to willful neglect rather than reasonable cause. Serious, debilitating health problems are almost always considered to be reasonable cause. Joe Kristan found a recent Tax Court decision overruling the IRS’s finding that a taxpayer’s brain injury was not sufficient to excuse the late filing of her tax returns: [...]
Tags: Court Cases · IRS Penalties
Russ Fox reports about a tax preparer who got six years jail time for impersonating a CPA, not for the usual and perfectably understandable reason of bagging hot chicks, but rather, to defraud investors: Nick Holquin, Jr. was a tax preparer in San Jose. He decided to invest in a Mississippi land development project. When the economy tanked, [...]
Tags: Court Cases · Tax Crimes
There is an epidemic of blame shifting in the housing crisis. People who knew or should have known that they would not be able to honor the terms of the mortgage notes they signed when they expected housing values to rise are, now that housing prices have declined, attempting to shift the blame to their lenders for giving [...]
Tags: Court Cases · Deductible Expenses · Taxes 101
