NYT Article on Perhaps Biggest Tax Heist Ever

Ukraine’s illegal amber mining boom is scarring the earth and making criminal gangs rich ANC Australia

 

Weaponizing Fascism for Democracy: The Beginning Yasha Levine. Stage 1 Identity Politics?


Dataset Search and Learn moreabout including your datasets in Dataset Search.

The Spotted Pig is closing. Am I reading between the lines correctly that Friedman is closing it down so he doesn’t have to pay his victims?

Anesthesiologist Sentenced for Tax Perjury 

Eleventh Circuit Affirms Conviction of Another Congressman

In United States v. Brown, ___ F.3d ___, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 556 (11th Cir. 2020), 11th Cir. here and CL here, Brown, a former congresswoman, was charged with 24 counts for a melange of crimes, including mail and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit, false statements, tax obstruction (§ 7212(a), one count) and tax perjury (§ 7206(1), three counts).  The jury convicted of all except 4 of the fraud counts.  On appeal, Brown argued that the trial judge had improperly dismissed a juror who, another juror reported, stated to the jurors at the beginning of deliberations that (Slip Op. 12-15):

"A Higher Being told me Corrine Brown was Not Guilty on all charges". He later went on to say he "trusted the Holy Ghost". 

SmartLawyer, Should Lawyers Get Inked?:

It would be hard to call getting a tattoo a rebellious act or a thumbing of the nose at social norms or expectations. ...  36% of U.S. people between the ages of 18 and 29 have at least one tattoo.

But what of lawyers?

Should they risk getting a tattoo, given they work in one of the more conservative professions going? ...

Lawyers are not, say, lifeguards. They don’t expose a lot of skin. And just about all of the advice we saw on the internet said lawyers can definitely rock a tat — just make sure it’s not exposed.

NYT Article on Perhaps Biggest Tax Heist Ever 

The NYT has this article:  David Segal, It May Be the Biggest Tax Heist Ever. And Europe Wants Justice (NYT 1/23/20), here.  I haven't yet figured out how the scam works, but it is a cum-ex deal.  The article says cryptically:

Through careful timing, and the coordination of a dozen different transactions, cum-ex trades produced two refunds for dividend tax paid on one basket of stocks. 

One basket of stocks. Abracadabra. Two refunds.

Another quote:

Before it all unraveled, the cum-ex ecosystem of lawyers, advisers and auditors enjoyed heady days. Last year, the lawyer who testified anonymously at the Bonn trial described the culture of the cum-ex world to Oliver Schröm and Christian Salewski, two reporters on the German television show “Panorama,” under disguising makeup. It was a realm beyond morality, he said: all male, supremely arrogant, and guided by the conviction that the German state is an enemy and German taxpayers are suckers.

And another quote:

American bankers didn’t try cum-ex at home because they feared domestic regulators. So they moved operations to London and treated the rest of Europe as an anything-goes frontier. Frank Tibo, a former chief tax officer at a bank where Mr. Shields and Mr. Mora worked, said American and British cum-ex traders regarded the Continent as a backwater of old economies ripe for swindling.

The article says that the traders were reluctant to pull the scam in the U.S., so did so in Europe.  One of the larger scammers is reported to tell his cohorts queasy about the scam:

“Whoever has a problem with the fact that because of our work there are fewer kindergartens being built,” Dr. Berger reportedly said, “here’s the door.”

As I read the article, I kept thinking about the Son-of-Boss bullshit tax shelters where lawyers, major law firms, accountants, major accounting firms, brokers, brokerage firms, financial and math gurus and others came together to create and implement raids on the U.S. Treasury.

1. A less aggressive scam of (I think) a similar nature was done and approved in Compaq Computer Corp. v. Commissioner, 277 F.3d 778 (5th Cir. 2002), here, reversing 113 T.C. 214 (1999).  Edith Jones, once on the Supreme Court shortlist wrote that opinion.  In my mind it is one of the worst opinions ever written.  Well, I should qualify that.  Frank Lyon Co. v. United States, 435 U.S. 561 (1978), here (well even saying Frank Lyon was the worst, some other Supreme Court tax cases are equally bad).

2.  If I figure out how "Cum-Ex" works, I may come back with an explanation.  But it may be above my pay grade.  Even so, as the Tax Court is fond of saying for bullshit tax shelters--the claimed tax benefits are too good to be true.