Monthly Archives: May 2017

According to DoJ on May 24, 2017 in federal court in Brooklyn, Costas Takkas, a 60 yr old UK national pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy in connection with his receipt and transmission of millions of dollars in bribes paid to now-former CONCACAF president and FIFA vice president, Jeffrey Webb.

• TRAFFIC USA. Webb, Takkas, and representatives of Traffic USA, one of the sports marketing companies, arranged for Traffic USA to secretly funnel half of Webb’s $3 million bribe through front companies and accounts controlled by Takkas. 
• After receiving this $1.5 million, Takkas distributed these funds at Webb’s direction.  

• MEDIA WORLD. the other sports marketing company, paid approximately $500,000 of its $1.5 million share of the bribe money through a sham transaction involving a false invoice, to accounts controlled by Takkas.

• the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York,
• the FBI New York Field Office, and
• the IRS-CI Los Angeles Field Office.

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In March, Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-headquartered law firm at the center of the Panama Papers affair, announced that it had been forced to dismiss 250 employees from its offices worldwide due to the “current media, political and economic environment.”

Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, who resigned as prime ministertwo days after the Panama Papers story first broke, remains a member of parliament.

The work of ICIJ and its many global partners has gone on to be honored with prizes or shortlisted for dozens of international awards, and journalists continue producing new investigative stories based on Panama Papers data on a regular basis.

Want to Know if the OVDP Program is Right for You?

 

Contact the Tax Lawyers at 

Marini& Associates, P.A.  

 

 

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at: www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com or

Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888) 882-9243

  

 

The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Our Country Home Enterprises, Inc., (CA 7 5/3/2017) 119 AFTR 2d ¶ 2017-729, affirmed the Tax Court and agreed with similar holdings by the Fourth and Tenth Circuits, has held that a portion of Reg. § 301.6330-1(e)(3) is a reasonable interpretation of the Code.

That portion specifies that a conference with the Appeals Office is a prior opportunity for purposes of the rule that precludes a taxpayer from raising the issue of his tax liability at a collection due process (CDP) hearing if he had a prior opportunity to dispute that liability.

Under § 6330(c)(4)(A)'s plain language, because Our Country Home raised the issue of its liability in a prior hearing before the Appeals Office, and because Our Country Home participated meaningfully in that hearing, Our Country Home could not contest its liability again in its CDP hearing.

According to Law360, three taxpayers seeking to switch over to the IRS’ new “streamlined” compliance program for unreported offshore income argued to a D.C. Circuit panel Tuesday that their lawsuit is not foreclosed by the Anti-Injunction Act's bar on pre-enforcement tax challenges, attacking the government’s key defense in the case. The case is Maze et al. v. Internal Revenue Service et al., case number 16-5265, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Eva Maze, Suzanne Batra and Margot Lichtenstein have asked the appeals court to reverse a lower court’s ruling dismissing their suit, which aims to allow the taxpayers to jump from an older compliance program, known as the IRS Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program, to a streamlined procedure with several advantages by eliminating strict transition rules they claim run afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly held in July that the taxpayers’ consolidated suit would violate the Anti-Injunction Act that prohibits federal courts from taking actions that would restrict the collection of taxes. If the plaintiffs successfully jumped from one disclosure program to another, as they sued to do, it would prevent the IRS from collecting accurate penalties for the tax years at issue and make it more difficult for the agency to backtrack and collect penalties the agency was otherwise entitled to for previous years, Judge Kollar-Kotelly said.

Representing the taxpayers, George M. Clarke III of Baker McKenzie said that all the taxpayers’ suit aims to do is get an injunction blocking the rules that are preventing them from applying to the streamlined program, not stop the IRS from collecting taxes.

U.S. Circuit Judge Thomas B. Griffith seemed unconvinced by the argument. The lawsuit, he said, “seems to me to be in the wheelhouse of what the Anti-Injunction Act is talking about.”

Griffith asked why the taxpayers couldn’t just pay the penalty under the existing program and file a refund suit raising the same challenge to the transition rules. Clarke replied that the taxpayers will be foreclosed from pursuing such an action if they stay in the OVDP program, because of the closing agreement they would have to sign, while opting out of the program would waive the right to challenge the rules.

When Maze, Batra and Lichtenstein launched their suit in October 2015, they argued that they were forced to comply with an arbitrary set of rules in connection with the 2014 offshore income program because they had voluntarily participated in an earlier version of the disclosure program.

A few years later, the IRS revealed its 2014 streamlined filing compliance procedures, under which individuals who had inadvertently not reported certain offshore income could correct these errors in exchange for reduced penalties. But the IRS refused to allow individuals who previously entered into the 2012 voluntary disclosure program to access those benefits unless they complied with a set of transition rules, according to the suit.

The plaintiffs asked the court to remove the transition rules for being unlawful, noting that applicants who enter directly into the 2014 streamlined program can participate by certifying that their failure to report certain offshore assets had not been willful, and saying it was then up to the IRS to uncover willfulness. However, applicants who participated in the overseas voluntary disclosure program before July 2014 must affirmatively prove nonwillfulness before being allowed to enter into the 2014 SFCP, the suit claimed.