The Rich Pay the Most Taxes

[Uncle Fester]

And other myths...

Tax Cheats Called Out of Control

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: August 1, 2006
So many superrich Americans evade taxes using offshore accounts that law enforcement cannot control the growing misconduct, according to a Senate report that provides the most detailed look ever at high-level tax schemes.


Doug Mills/The New York Times
Senator Carl Levin discussed tax abuses at a briefing Monday in Washington. Cheating accounts for as much as $70 billion a year.
Among the billionaires cited in the report are the owner of the New York Jets football team, Robert Wood Johnson IV; the producer of the “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” children’s show, Haim Saban; and two Texas businessmen, Charles and Sam Wyly, who the Center for Public Integrity found in 2000 were the ninth-largest contributors to President Bush.

Mr. Johnson and Mr. Saban, who are portrayed as victims in the report, are scheduled to testify today before the Senate Permanent Investigations subcommittee. They are expected to say that professional advisers assured them their deals to avoid taxes were more likely lawful than not. The Wyly brothers told the committee that they would invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and thus were not called to testify. The report characterizes them as active participants in tax schemes.

Cheating now equals about 7 cents out of each dollar paid by honest taxpayers, as much as $70 billion a year, the report estimated.

“The universe of offshore tax cheating has become so large that no one, not even the United States government, could go after all of it,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat whose staff ran the investigation.

Senator Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the subcommittee, adopted the minority report on Sunday as the product of the full committee.

The report details how the Quellos Group, a tax shelter boutique based in Seattle, “concocted a tax shelter” using $9.6 billion “worth of fake securities transactions that were used to generate billions of dollars of fake capital losses.”

Senator Levin said that when investigators asked for trading records they were first told the trades were private, over-the-counter transactions. He said investigators asked for trading tickets or other evidence of who owned the $9.6 billion worth of stock and were told the stocks were never owned by the parties involved.

“They just wrote down numbers on paper and claimed losses,” he said. “It was just like fantasy baseball, except the taxes not paid were for real.”

Quellos, in a statement, said, “we fundamentally disagree with the report, which presents a one-sided view.” It said the transactions, which the Senate committee describes as fabrications, were real and involved “a significant possibility of economic gain and loss.”

The investigation, which took 18 months, involved 74 subpoenas, 80 interviews and the collection of more than two million documents, and yet Senator Levin said “the six cases we present are just examples, just a pinhole look.”

More...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/01/busin ... r=homepage

[BSmack]

Did Shawniqua tell you dat!!!

sin

mvscal

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

And other myths...

Tax Cheats Called Out of Control

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON....
Senator Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the subcommittee, adopted the minority report on Sunday as the product of the full committee.
[/quote]

"His dad was getting blown by hookers on Main St. so his opinions are irrelevant."

Sincerely, Won't Make It To The 5 o'clock News

[BSmack]

And other myths...

Not a myth. It's a fact.

No it isn't you fucking retard.

[Diego in Seattle]

Meanwhile......

Feds eliminate 157 auditors of rich taxpayers
Move cuts ranks of IRS lawyers who inspect returns that include estate and gift taxes
David Cay Johnston, New York Times

Sunday, July 23, 2006

The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others.

The administration plans to cut the jobs of 157 of the agency's 345 estate tax lawyers, plus 17 support personnel, in less than 70 days. Kevin Brown, an IRS deputy commissioner, confirmed the cuts after the New York Times was given internal documents by people inside the IRS who oppose them.

The Bush administration has successfully lobbied Congress to enact measures that reduce the number of Americans who are subject to the estate tax -- which opponents refer to as the "death tax" -- but has failed in its efforts to eliminate the tax entirely.

Brown said in a telephone interview Friday that he had ordered the staff cuts because far fewer people were obliged to pay estate taxes under Bush's legislation.

But six IRS estate tax lawyers whose jobs are likely to be eliminated said in interviews that the cuts were just the latest moves behind the scenes at the IRS to shield people with political connections and complex tax-avoidance devices from thorough audits.

Sharyn Phillips, a veteran IRS estate tax lawyer in Manhattan, called the cuts a "back-door way for the Bush administration to achieve what it cannot get from Congress, which is repeal of the estate tax."

Brown dismissed as preposterous any suggestion that the IRS was soft on rich tax cheats. He said the money saved by eliminating the estate tax lawyers would be used to hire revenue agents to audit income tax returns, especially those from people making more than $1 million.

Brown said civil service rules barred the estate tax lawyers from moving over to audit income taxes. An IRS spokesman said the agency had asked for permission to allow such transfers twice but the Office of Personnel Management had not responded.

Estate tax lawyers are the most productive tax law enforcement personnel at the IRS, according to Brown. For each hour they work, they find an average of $2,200 of taxes owed to the government.

Brown said analysis showed that the IRS was auditing enough returns to catch cheats and that 10 percent of the estate audits brought in 80 percent of the additional taxes. He said auditing a greater percentage of gift and estate tax returns would not be worthwhile because "the next case is not a lucrative case" and likely to be of relatively little value.

That is a change from six years ago, when the IRS said 85 percent of large taxable gifts it audited shortchanged the government. The IRS said then that it would hire three more lawyers just to audit taxable gifts of $1 million or more.

Over the past five years, officials at both the IRS and the Treasury have told Congress that cheating among the highest-income Americans is a major and growing problem.

The six IRS tax lawyers, some of whom were willing to be named, all said that clear evidence of fraud was pursued vigorously by the agency, but that when audits showed the use of complicated schemes to understate the value of assets, the IRS had become increasingly reluctant to pursue cases.

The lawyers said the risk analysis system the IRS used to evaluate whether to pursue such cases gave higher-level officials cover to not pursue tax cheats and, in the process, emboldened the most aggressive tax advisers to prepare gift and estate tax returns that shortchanged the government.

"This is not a game the poor will win, but the rich will," said John Hruska, another IRS estate tax lawyer in New York who, like Phillips, is active in the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS workers.

Colleen Kelley, the national union president, said: "If these lawyers are not there to audit the gift and estate tax returns, then a lot of taxes that should be paid will go uncollected, and that impacts every taxpayer who is paying their fair share."

======================================

And middle America thinks that Bush is looking after them.

[BSmack]

Yes, it is. The numbers have been posted here numerous times before. You've lost this argument far too many times.

Follow the money dipshit.

[Diego in Seattle]

Naturally the republitards avoid this thread outlining this train wreck of many that will send the republican majority down in flames come November.

[Wolfman]

ah--the NY Times--
all the news that's fit for your
parakeet to poop on !!

[Diego in Seattle]

[Jimmy Medalions]

Yes, it is. The numbers have been posted here numerous times before. You've lost this argument far too many times.

Why not let him take another beatdown. The last one was good times.