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THERE ARE NO TAX CRIMINALS?

January 27, 2006

A blogging attorney has an interesting view of the tax law, at least as applied to his fellow lawyers. He apparently thinks that there is no such thing as a tax crime:

This article about the IRS prosecuting lawyers who come up with tax shelters did more than strike me. It's just plain wrong...

Sure, there's another way to look at it: the lawyers actually did something illegal that was precluded by the code, and they should be punished. As you can see just from these paragraphs, however, there's no such thing as black and white in the Internal Revenue Service code. To prove that, all you have to do is look up section 61 that defines income and see what a mess the whole thing starts with.

It could be exciting to hire this man to do tax planning; a judge might not share his view that there is no such thing as a tax crime.

Of course the tax law is far too complicated. Still, there are some things that are black and white. Richard Hatch's jury didn't think the tax law was too unclear to return a conviction.

A search of this attorney's site shows he hasn't objected to accountants being indicted for tax crimes. It appears, then, that he's making a more parochial argument that attorneys shouldn't face tax prosecution because they can cloak their crimes in complexity. I guess that just means crooked accountants should get a J.D.

Hat tip: The TaxProf Blog

UPDATE: Dr. Maule is similarly unimpressed.

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