As you can see from above, trust affects speed and cost. When trust goes down, the speed will go down and the cost will go up. It’s a “tax”. When the trust goes up the speed goes up with it, and the cost comes down. That is a “dividend”. High trust organisations have been shown to outperform low trust organisations by more than 280% (on total return to shareholders). High trust offers a multiplier of 3x performance.
STEPHEN COVEY MASTERCLASS: LEADING AT THE SPEED OF TRUST
Greg Monahan & Chris Janczewski: IRSCI on Cybercrime
MAN OF MANY TALENTS — When the FBI seized more than half of the Colonial Pipeline’s $4.4 million bitcoin ransom earlier this summer, it didn’t manage it alone. They needed an seemingly unusual agency to make it happen: the IRS.
For years, the agency that most people know for tax audits has been building up its cybercrime capabilities and assisting fellow law enforcement partners tackle big cyber cases. As your MC host reports for Pros this morning, the IRS’s criminal investigations unit gave a central assist in responding to the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and the SolarWinds cyberespionage campaign. The unit’s role in the Colonial Pipeline case has not been reported before.
— Why the IRS? The agency’s cybercrime unit specializes in the financial nitty-gritty of online transactions, including ransomware gangs’ favorite currencies: crypto. Given that speed is the name of the game in any cybercrime case, the IRS is usually tapped in to take over the crypto tracing elements of an investigation, while the FBI and Department of Homeland Security tackle the rest.
Now, the federal government is investing more resources in the IRS to fight the growing ransomware problem and other cybercrime. The IRS’ cybercrime unit has expanded from about five agents in 2015 to nearly 130 personnel today — in part because the agency combined its cybercrime and digital forensics team in July.
Jarod Koopman, acting head of the agency’s combined unit, also said the agency is opening a center in Northern Virginia later this year to bring together its cybercrime agents with other law enforcement partners as well as federal contractors who also focus on cryptocurrency investigations. “It’s almost like a cryptocurrency-fighting A-team,” Koopman said of the new center. “We’re trying to get the best of the best together to tackle some of the more challenging investigations that pop-up.”
Companies linked to The Grounds and its owners buy $14m in property despite owners’ tax problems
While a number of companies used to run Insta-Famous eatery The Grounds sunk with millions in tax debts, others linked to the operation and its owners went on a $14 million property buying spree.
Ms. Amos was a highly successful tax practitioner, a CPA, who had decades of high-level business experience. On her 2014 and 2015 returns she reported about $100,000 of IRA income against which she claimed over $4 million of net operating losses (NOLs) that dated back to 1999. While she could produce her 1999 tax returns showing the NOLs, she could not produce the underlying records substantiating what she had then reported, causing Judge Urda to write:
“It beggars belief that she would be unaware...[of] her responsibility to demonstrate her entitlement to the deductions she claimed.” Op. at 11. Details below the fold.
Lesson From The Tax Court: An Object Lesson For Tax Professionals
From Khrushchev’s U.S.S.R. to Putin’s RussiaAtlantic.
ClubsNSW litigation against dying whistleblower an ‘abuse of process’, lawyers say
FTX balance sheet, revealed FTAlphaville ZOMG!!! This isn’t a balance sheet, it’s a napkin doodle. Your pet store has more entires on its balance sheet.
FTX’s Balance Sheet Was Bad Matt Levine, Bloomberg
Anti-corruption chief at Chinese spy agency admits taking US$33 million in bribes
- Liu Yanping was the latest senior figure in the security apparatus to appear in court on similar charges
It really does feel that the government has paid too little attention to this issue for far too long, as remains true of the tax gap about which I have been writing for longer than most people given that the issue was virtually unknown in the UK when I first published a report on it, way back in 2006.
It really is time that the government got serious about fraud
Inazu: The Incomprehensible Witness Of Forgiveness
Consider a mining town. Once upon a time there was a mine, and the mine was the largest employer in the town. They mined copper ore and sold it on the global market. This brought money into the town, which sprouted a restaurant, real estate broker, doctor’s office, and church.
Although those people weren’t employed by the mine, they got enough customers from the miners, who fundamentally got money from outside the town.But eventually the mine dried up. The miners lost their jobs, since the town was no longer bringing in enough money to pay them. The doctor, realtor, and waiter were still employed, as their “mines” didn’t dry up.
But they did, as they were really just mining the miners. The town persisted for a bit, passing the same money around in a circle. But with each pass, there was a transaction fee. And there were still things like food, which needed to be imported into the town.The town went broke, died, and became a ghost town.
On Money Creation and Ghost Towns like Pilhov Exiles
An Astonishing Exhibition Shows How Ancient Mesopotamians Not Only Worshiped, But Respected, Women artnet
D.C. Council Is Set To Overhaul The Entire Criminal Codedcist: “Here’s Everything You Need To Know – Later today the D.C. Council is set to cast a final vote on a monumental piece of legislation, a 450-page bill that would completely overhaul the city’s criminal laws. The full rewrite has been more than a decade in the making, spurred by the simple reality that D.C.’s criminal code was first written by Congress 120 years ago and only updated in piecemeal fashion since. For a project of this magnitude, there’s some surprising consensus. Just about everyone involved says the overhaul needed to happen, and people and groups on opposite sides of the criminal justice system say they generally agree with 95% of it.
The full rewrite dangerously decreases penalties for some violent offenses and unwisely expands the right to a jury trial and ability for convicts to request sentence reductions. Defense attorneys and criminal justice reformers, though, say those changes stem from extensive research as well as a practical understanding of how judges are currently sentencing people. Last-minute changes are expected to be debated ahead of Tuesday’s final vote, though it remains likely that lawmakers will ultimately approve the overhaul. (They unanimously did so during an initial vote earlier this month.) Still, Mayor Muriel Bowser has been particularly critical of certain provisions and says she’ll consider wielding her veto pen, and the entire measure will then have to survive a 60-day congressional review period — under a likely GOP-led House. Here’s everything you need to know about the overhaul and the debate around it…”
