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According to Law360, the Internal Revenue Service and several international partners created well over 50 leads on potential tax crimes and money laundering involving cryptocurrency during a joint action this week, the agency's Criminal Investigation chief said Thursday.

The Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement, or J5, gathered criminal investigators and financial intelligence units from Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the U.S. for a "cyber challenge," Jim Lee, chief of IRS Criminal Investigation, said during a virtual news briefing. The group's fifth challenge to drive leads on tax crimes focused on data mining and financial reports with the help of data scientists and industry experts from cryptocurrency companies Chainalysis, BlockTrace, and AnChain, according to Lee.

"These Are What I Consider, After A Briefing,
High-Dollar, High-Impact Leads That Have
Cross-Jurisdiction Representation," Lee Said."

We're not fighting for a split decision; we're fighting for the knockout punch."

The Canada Revenue Agency is hosting the challenge in Ottawa. Sharing the same room significantly expedites how quickly information is shared, which creates more leads, Oleg Pobereyko, J5 project lead for the U.S. and the J5's cyber group lead, said during the briefing.

"The main priorities are tax crime," Pobereyko said, but the team also looked into individuals who made significant amounts of crypto potentially from drug trafficking, human trafficking and child exploitation.

A paper summarizing the results of the current challenge is expected to be published next week by the group's financial intelligence units, or FIU. It was the first time that the FIUs participated in a J5 challenge, according to the release.

Cryptocurrency allows investigators to follow suspects' transactions over a longer time frame compared to traditional financial crime investigations, even with old data, according to Ron Willemse, strategic advisor to the Dutch Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service.

The J5 helped to track diverted funds and make arrests following an indictment, charging three founders of a cryptocurrency called SafeMoon with a conspiracy to misappropriate millions of dollars,  that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York unsealed Wednesday,November 1, 2023.

Over 83% of IRS-CI's investigations that are recommended for prosecution have a primary suspect with a BSA filing, the report said.

Since the J5's inception in 2018 its challenges have helped track down people who make a living out of facilitating "international tax crime," Eric Ferron, director general of the CRA's Criminal Investigations Directorate, said during the briefing. 

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According to Law360, House Republican legislation that would rescind $14.3 billion in Inflation Reduction Act funding for the Internal Revenue Service to offset an aid package for Israel.

This Would Decrease Federal Revenue By $26.8 Billion Over The Next Decade, The Congressional Budget Office Said Wednesday, November 1, 2023.

The Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, which would pay for aid to Israel by rescinding $14.3 billion in unobligated funding that the Inflation Reduction Act provided to the IRS, would impede the agency's ability to undertake enforcement actions, the CBO said in a report. 

The House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on the proposal. Senate Democrats have already said the legislation would be a nonstarter in that chamber.

"Republicans Never Miss A Chance To Protect 
Their Billionaire Donors," Whitehouse Said.

"As if conditioning aid to Israel on this gift to wealthy tax cheats wasn't bad enough, what they claim will 'pay for' the aid will actually add $12.5 billion to the deficit, nearly doubling the bill's total cost."

The House is also planning to vote on an IRS appropriations bill that aims to cut the agency's annual funding.

The IRS funding bill passed by the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee in July would give the agency $11.2 billion for fiscal 2024, a $1.1 billion drop compared with the agency's fiscal 2023 budget. 

It would also provide 

• $4.2 billion in enforcement funding — a $1.2 billion cut compared with the current fiscal year funding and 
• proposes clawing back $6.1 billion in unobligated funds for enforcement and $4.1 billion for operations support that the IRS received under the Inflation Reduction Act. 
• The 2022 law originally provided the IRS with $25.3 billion for operations support.

Lawmakers have submitted several amendments to the bill ahead of a House Rules Committee vote that could bring the proposal to the House floor next week.

Proposed Republican amendments would block funding for implementation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's global tax deal and funding for the IRS to enforce the American Rescue Plan Act's provision that requires peer-to-peer payment platforms such as Venmo and PayPal to report aggregate payments of $600 or more. The threshold was $20,000 under previous law.

Republicans also submitted amendments that would prohibit the IRS from hiring new agents and prevent the agency from purchasing and storing firearms and ammunition.

Democrats have introduced amendments to block the IRS from using funds to issue regulatory guidance or rulings that restrict state and local tax deduction workarounds and increase funding for the Taxpayer Advocate Service by $10 million.

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According to the DoJ, a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, returned an indictment, unsealed today, charging a Virginia man with income tax evasion and failure to pay employment taxes.

According to the indictment, Rick Tariq Rahim of Great Falls owned and operated two businesses, BV Management LLC, an Amazon reseller, and BusinessVentures.com LLC, an umbrella company over other businesses including laser tag facilities. 

Starting In At Least 2012, Rahim Allegedly Took Steps To
Evade IRS Efforts To Collect More Than $1 Million In Federal Income Taxes He Allegedly Owed For Tax Years 2004 And 2011.

The indictment charges that in November 2016, Rahim submitted a false form to the IRS that omitted valuable assets he owned, including:

• 

  a helicopter, 
  

• a 2006 Bentley, 
• a 2008 Lamborghini and 
• real property, the ownership of which he allegedly transferred to his wife two weeks after submitting the form. 

The indictment further alleges that Rahim also withdrew a total of more than $1.1 million in cash in amounts less than $10,000 to avoid triggering currency transaction reports from the bank and paid personal expenses from his businesses’ bank accounts, including more than $889,000 toward his mortgages and more than $669,000 to purchase or lease cars, including three different Lamborghinis. 

In addition, the indictment charges that from 2015 to 2021, Rahim also did not pay to the IRS the taxes that his businesses withheld from employee paychecks or file quarterly tax returns reporting those withholdings.

If convicted, Rahim faces a maximum penalty of five (5) years in prison for the tax evasion count and five (5) years in prison for each count of failing to pay over employment tax withholdings. 

Have An IRS Tax Problem?

Marini & Associates, P.A. 

Read more at: Tax Times blog

The Internal Revenue Service has collected $122 million in back taxes from high-income, high-wealth individuals in a new enforcement initiative, the agency said on Friday October 20, 2023.

The back taxes were collected from 100 high-income individuals the agency targeted in its effort to ramp up enforcement against people with more than $1 million in income who haven't filed taxes and those who have failed to pay more than $250,000 in tax debt, the IRS said in a statement. 

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., applauded the agency's enforcement and customer service accomplishments.

"Investing in the IRS is already paying off with better customer service for taxpayers and a real plan to crack down on the worst wealthy and corporate tax cheats," Wyden said in a statement Friday, later adding, "I'll continue to defend these enforcement efforts against the far-right's effort to roll back these plans and protect corporate malfeasance."

Lawmakers are still working to determine the agency's funding levels for the upcoming year. The IRS funding bill passed by the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee in July would give the agency $11.2 billion for fiscal 2024, a $1.1 billion drop compared with the agency's fiscal 2023 budget. The Senate Appropriations Committee's IRS funding bill would give the agency $12.3 billion, which is in line with the agency's current-year funding.

The Agency Also Had $21.4 Billion Of The $80 Billion Funding Boost It Received Under The Inflation Reduction Act Clawed Back Under The Fiscal Responsibility Act In June.

Werfel has warned repeatedly that if the agency has its annual funding cut in spending bills, it will need to use Inflation Reduction Act money to run day-to-day operations, which will exhaust resources intended to make improvements for taxpayers.

"We know that implementing such an ambitious plan is challenging, and we understand that our challenges are made even more stark by ongoing budget uncertainty," Werfel said Thursday. "That's why it's so important to continue reporting on the strides we're making to modernize and improve our service so that Congress and the American people know that we are investing our resources wisely and in ways that will help everyone and ensure fairness of the tax system."

Have An IRS Tax Problem?

     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