Monthly Archives: January 2024

According to Law360, a new rule requiring millions of companies to disclose their beneficial owners to the U.S. Department of the Treasury is now in effect, many may not know they are responsible for these reporting obligations.

The rules for reporting beneficial ownership information to the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network are intended to unmask shell corporations that may be used for financial crimes including money laundering, and they're primarily aimed at smaller companies. The requirements became effective with the new year. The new reporting requirements could potentially apply to up to 32 million entities. 

Congress enacted the CTA in 2021 as part of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, within the National Defense Authorization Act. Finalized in 2022, the BOI reporting rule requires businesses to submit beneficial ownership information that FinCEN said it will use to create a national database that will help target tax evasion, money laundering and other crimes carried out through shell companies.

Need Help With BOI Reports?

     Contact the Tax Lawyers at

Marini & Associates, P.A. 

for a FREE Tax HELP Contact us at:
www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com
or Toll Free at 888 8TAXAID (888-882-9243)

Read more at: Tax Times blog

According to DoJ, an indictment was unsealed in St. Paul, Minnesota, charging a former Excelsior, Minnesota, man with tax evasion, assisting in the preparation of false tax returns and making false statements to federal agents. 

According to the indictment, from 2014 through 2018, David V. Erickson, a licensed CPA, engaged in a scheme to conceal from the IRS income that he earned abroad by falsely characterizing the funds he received as loans. Erickson allegedly owned and operated Halstead Bay Holdings (HBH), a Minnesota-based consulting company. HBH allegedly received payments from several foreign companies that Erickson partially owned. These foreign companies allegedly provided marketing and payment processing systems for an adult content website.

Erickson allegedly caused his foreign companies to transfer millions of dollars held offshore to bank accounts in the United States that he controlled. He allegedly directed his bookkeeper and others to falsely characterize those payments as nontaxable loans in HBH’s accounting records. HBH’s purported debt allegedly grew to nearly $5 million by the end of 2018. Erickson allegedly used the funds for personal expenses, including the purchase of a $1.3 million home and a luxury vehicle.

The indictment further alleges that Erickson provided false information to his accountants and bookkeepers, and, in turn, filed false federal income tax returns with the IRS. Erickson also allegedly lied to IRS Criminal Investigation special agents by claiming he had no authority to direct the foreign companies to send money.

If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years (5) in prison for each tax evasion count and for making a false statement to IRS-CI agents and three years (3) in prison for each count of assisting in the preparation of false tax returns. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Have an IRS Tax Problem?

     Contact the Tax Lawyers at

for a FREE Tax HELP Contact us at:
www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com
or Toll Free at 888 8TAXAID (888-882-9243)

Read more at: Tax Times blog

On July 21, 2023 we posted Shall I Stay or Shall I Go?  - IRS Reports Nearly 55% Increase in US Expatriations In 2nd Quarter of 2023 where we discussed that he number of people expatriated from the United States rose nearly 55% during the second quarter of 2023 compared with the previous quarter, the Internal Revenue Service said in a published notice.

Now the Internal Revenue Service said in its notice that the number of people who expatriated from the U.S. jumped nearly 45% during the fourth quarter of 2023 compared with the previous quarter. 

The Number Of People Losing Or Renouncing Their U.S. Citizenship Increased to 1145 For the 4th Qtr of 2023.

A 45% Increase From The 3rd Quarter of 2023.

Included on the list are those who lost U.S. citizenship under Internal Revenue Code Section 877(a) and Section 877A, according to the notice, as well as long-term residents who are treated as losing citizenship under Section 877(e)(2).

According to CNBC the top reason why Americans abroad want to dump their U.S. citizenship include:

• Nearly 1 in 4 American expatriates say they are “seriously considering” or “planning” to ditch their U.S. citizenship, a survey from Greenback Expat Tax Services finds.  
• About 9 million U.S. citizens are living abroad, the U.S. Department of State estimates.
• More than 4 in 10 who would renounce citizenship say it’s due to the burden of filing U.S. taxes, the Greenback poll shows.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Need Advise on Expatriation?

 

Contact the Tax Lawyers at 

Marini & Associates, P.A.   

for a FREE Tax Consultation contact us at:

www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com 
or Toll Free at 888-8TaxAid (888) 882-9243

Here is something for you I guess I don't know the wages paid 4100 yeah a Nuria this is for you

Read more at: Tax Times blog

According to Law360, a wife indicted with her husband on tax evasion charges relating to an abusive trust scheme should not be allowed to remove her ankle monitor, the U.S. government told a Colorado federal court, saying her previous tracking devices sustained suspicious damage.

Marcia Predmore's GPS monitoring devices have already broken twice since September, when a federal magistrate judge ordered her to start wearing a monitor while she awaits trial on charges that she and her husband illegally avoided paying $2 million in personal income taxes from 2016 to 2021, prosecutors said Thursday. 

Though Predmore claimed the breakage happened while she was sleeping or putting on shoes, evidence shows the same plastic piece on the device was shattered in more than one place both times, prosecutors said in a motion opposing her request to remove the device.

Predmore, who is 64 and could face roughly five years (5) in prison, is also a flight risk; a fact that hasn't changed since U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Prose decided after a two-hour hearing that she should wear the monitor, prosecutors said. Predmore has a visa allowing her to work in Dubai and the resources to charter a private plane there, prosecutors said. She and her husband earned an estimated $1.8 million in 2021 and are signatories on at least 14 bank accounts, according to the motion.

Predmore and her husband, Timothy McPhee, have pled not guilty to all the charges in their indictment, which was unsealed on September 25, 2023, Where the couple are accused of evading their own taxes using a scheme McPhee and his Texas-based business partner, Larry Conner, are accused in the indictment of peddling to other business community starting in 2017.

According to the allegations, McPhee and Conner promoted their strategy at hotel seminars in Colorado, Texas and Mexico, charging customers $25,000 to $50,000 for help diverting their earnings into sham trusts and a purported charitable foundation. McPhee and Conner showed their customers how to use the trusts to hide business income and illegally deduct personal expenses such as family weddings, the indictment said. Conner pled not guilty to the charges, which include conspiracy to defraud the government, in October.

Prosecutors criticized Predmore's efforts before the court to characterize her tax evasion charges as the result of co-signing returns with her husband. Predmore is facing six felony charges of willful tax evasion, partly because she hosted and attended the hotel seminars, which were run through a business she co-owned with her husband, they said.

"She knew how the tax shelter worked, and she knew that the IRS published guidance on abusive trusts," prosecutors said. "This is not a case in which one spouse manipulated the other. Nor is this a case in which one spouse kept the other in the dark."

Predmore and her husband created four trusts and paid personal expenses from bank accounts they opened for each trust, according to their indictment. They also transferred multiple real estate properties into one of the trusts before selling, according to the charges.

Predmore, calling herself "a nonviolent grandmother, wife, mother and business person," asked the court on January 17, 2023, to remove the ankle monitor, saying that it was unnecessary and that she had "suffered significant problems" with it.

The device broke twice, once when she was putting on her shoes and another time while she was sleeping, she said. Both times she notified the authorities and drove more than an hour to Denver from her home in Estes Park, Colorado, to get a new one.

The government's fear that she would flee the country is "mere speculation and conjecture," she said. She can't travel to Dubai without her passport, which she has already surrendered. And the fact that she had permission to work in the country, where she intended to sell life insurance, doesn't suggest that "she would uproot herself from their chosen home community, family, friends, church and neighbors to live on the other side of the planet," she said.

Have An Abusive Trust?

Do You Like Your Freedom?

Contact the Tax Lawyers at

Marini & Associates, P.A. 

for a FREE Tax HELP Contact us at:
www.TaxAid.com or www.OVDPLaw.com
or Toll Free at 888 8TAXAID (888-882-9243)

 

Read more at: Tax Times blog