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WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE TIPPED HIM OFF?

December 31, 2007

"In hindsight, I believe I was not wise."

What do you suppose tipped off Minnesotan Robert Beale that it wasn't a good idea to embrace tax-protester arguments, stop paying taxes, and then jump bail before his trial? Maybe this:

Now Beale wears the orange jumpsuit of a jail inmate, back in custody after 14 months as a fugitive. His wife has divorced him and seized his assets. His son has ousted him from the Maple Grove computer firm Beale founded.

He spends his days in a jail cell, preparing for a trial that could send him to federal prison for a decade or more for tax evasion and unlawful flight.

That sort of insight must have helped Robert Beale build his successful computer firm in Minnesota. The quotes are from an interesting and sad profile of Mr. Beale in the Mineapolis Star-Tribune.

While Mr. Beale has finally grasped the obvious -- that his strategy was unwise -- it appears that he doesn't yet fully grasp just how unwise he was, and how unpersuasive he sounds. Here he speaks of the nearly $5.7 million in income he skipped taxes on after having it paid to a dummy corporation:

"It wasn't hidden from anyone," said Beale. "The accounting department knew what my income was. The government could have called me or written my company and found out what my income was."

Right. All the IRS had to do was call Mr. Beale, and he would have patiently explained the entire tax fraud. Why are they picking on him?

While he was on the run, his wife divorced him, walking away with his $5.6 million stake in the computer company he founded, his $2 million home in North Oaks, Minnesota, and his $1.9 million Florida place. Now the 64-year old Mr. Beale faces a decade in prison instead of a warm Florida retirement.

Mr. Beale says he started on this path after reading a book by tax-protest pied piper Irwin Shiff. It's stories like this that make it very hard to feel bad about the 13-year prison sentence that Mr. Schiff is serving.

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