Bill in Consideration Will Allow Government to Fire Federal Tax Cheats
There has been a legislation that was reintroduced this week by a House lawmaker that will allow the government to fire federal employees that do not pay their taxes.
This same legislation was passed by the house this past summer in a bipartisan vote; however, the legislation died in the Senate. Representative Jason Chaffetz brought life to the bill and guided it through the House during the 112th Congress.
The legislation presented would be applicable to executive and legislative branch workers, in addition to those working at the Postal Service who fail to pay taxes or haven’t settled on an agreement with the government to repay their debt. This same bill will also prevent the government from hiring people with severe tax debt. Severe tax debt is defined as an outstanding debt to the federal government where a public lien had needed to be filed. Currently, Internal Revenue Service employees are the only ones that will be fired for failing to keep up with their taxes.
Chaffetz mentioned on the debate room floor that the employees who are willing to make an effort to pay back the taxes will not get fired. Looking at a report from the IRS, there have been more than 98,000 federal employees that owed over $1 billion in unpaid federal income taxes in the year 2010. In addition, retired civilians had a tax debt of about $470 million, and over 83,000 military veterans had owed close to $1.6 billion in unpaid taxes in the year 2010.
Categories: Federal Tax, Income Tax, Tax Evasion, Tax Law Tags: federal income tax, federal tax, federal tax fraud, tax cheats, tax evasion, tax law
Man in Clarksville Guilty of Tax Fraud
A man in Clarksville had pleaded guilty in a federal court for the crime of filing a false tax income on January 14, 2013.
The man’s name was James Robert Sanford, 53, and in addition to filing a false tax income he was also guilty for aiding and abetting a false claim for a federal income tax refund. Jerry E. Martin, an Attorney for Tennessee, officially announced the news.
Sanford had brushes with the law a couple of years before this incident. On November 30, 2011, Sanford had been indicted by a federal grand jury in Nashville, and was charged with 6 counts of filing false income tax returns. Based on the indictment filed, Sanford had prepared and filed 2006 and 2007 federal income tax returns for him and his wife, knowing full well that the returns were fraudulent. The 2006 tax return claimed refunds of $5,774 and the 2007 tax return claimed refunds of $4,276.
Not only has Sanford filed false income tax returns for himself, but he did it for others as well, making a profit through his schemes. The returns that he claimed for these refunds for others were from $3,490 to $7,128.
Sanford will be sentenced on April 8, and he is likely to face a maximum penalty of 5 years imprisonment, in addition to a $250,000 fine for each false income tax return he made. He has come clean for all the false income tax returns he has claimed, and will be sentenced by Chief Judge William J. Haynes, Jr.
Categories: Federal Tax, Income Tax, Tax Evasion, Tax Law Tags: federal income tax, federal tax, federal tax fraud, income tax, tax crime, tax evasion, tax fraud
Florida Prisoner Caught Filing Fraudulent Federal Income Tax Returns
It seems that prison isn’t a good enough reason to keep you from cheating on your federal income tax.
WJHG (Source Below) has reported that Michael William Joseph III, an inmate of the Apalachee Correctional Institution in Florida, has pleaded guilty for filing fraudulent federal income tax returns to the IRS. This wouldn’t be Joseph’s first conviction of tax fraud, however. He has been serving time for faking federal income tax returns dating all the way back to 2006.
Prison, however, hasn’t kept Joseph from trying to scam the government with some fake federal income tax returns. He had filled out a series of tax forms with fabricated amounts of income and deductions. He had used the identities of his co-inmates in order to validate his returns. The illegitimately refunded federal income tax would then be deposited to various accounts he had control over.
What had tipped off Joseph’s tax scam was the size of his illegal refunds. Joseph had sought a total of nearly $180,000 in federal income tax returns. For a time it seemed that Joseph had managed to pull his scheme off when the government cashed him out for an alleged $50,000.
But investigators quickly got wind of his scam and successfully retrieved over $17,500 of the unlawfully refunded federal income tax from his personal bank account. An additional $11,600 was found in the mother’s ex-husband’s backyard.
The fifty three year old Joseph was indicted on various charges including but not limited to filing false federal income tax returns. Other charges include theft and mail fraud, amounting to a prison sentence of up to twenty years.
Categories: Federal Tax, Income Tax, State Tax, Tax Evasion, Tax Law Tags: avoiding taxes, federal income tax, federal tax, income tax, IRS, tax code, tax court, tax crime, tax evasion, tax fraud