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The top 1% of Americans evade $163 billion in owed taxes annually, the Treasury Department has said.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ar-AA1qvWut

When high-profile figures like Todd and Julie Chrisley of "Chrisley Knows Best" or Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino of "Jersey Shore" get busted for financial crimes such as tax fraud, critics opine that the crimes are common — and that's not untrue.
"There are routine categories of illicit acts that wealthy individuals often endeavor out of sheer greed," Matthew Barhoma, a Los Angeles defense attorney, told Business Insider.

Tax evasion, Barhoma said, is "perhaps the most infamous method."

In a 2021 report, the US Treasury Department estimated that the wealthiest 1% of Americans evade a whopping $163 billion in owed taxes every year. That accounts for about 28% of the total US tax gap — the difference between the amount of taxes owed and the amount taxpayers pay on time.

The Treasury Department said in the report that tax evasion tends to be concentrated among the wealthy, in part, because they can tap accountants and other experts "who help shield them from bearing their true income tax liability."

"Because these individuals know enforcement authorities lack the resources needed to pursue them, the consequences of their underpayments are viewed as minor, and so voluntary compliance rates tend to be lower," the Treasury Department said.

Barhoma said that to avoid paying taxes, high-net-worth people often set up offshore accounts in "tax havens" like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, "where financial secrecy is paramount."

These people, he said, "often will use shell companies to obscure the true ownership of assets, making it difficult for tax authorities to trace the money."

"Such deliberate acts are criminally culpable," Barhoma said.

Tama Kudman, a veteran criminal-defense attorney, said that in cases of tax fraud, people sometimes believe that their schemes are so complex and obscured that they'll never be exposed.

"They feel like it's buried in there so deeply nobody will ever find it because they've got so many assets and they've set up so many fancy sort of shields, like trusts and corporations, and things that are designed to be asset protectors or tax protectors," Kudman said.

And a lot of the time, those offenders are right. But sometimes, they get caught.

"Financial crime can be invisible," Barhoma said. "It takes forensic accounting and high-level review to detect."

Mark Ressler, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said he'd defended many wealthy people facing allegations of tax evasion through the use of illegal tax shelters.

These tax shelters typically involve "convoluted" financial transactions that are intended to "trick the IRS into believing that the transactions have some kind of economic basis — that the sole purpose of these transactions is not just to shield your money from Uncle Sam," said Ressler, a partner at the New York City firm Kasowitz Benson Torres.

The transactions create bogus losses on paper that are used to offset legitimate investment gains, which cuts the overall tax liability, Ressler said.

"Many feature interest-rate swaps, foreign-currency exchanges, shell companies, nominee accounts, and variations on these themes," he said. "The IRS is on point to challenge these efforts, but it's a game of whack-a-mole, as creative tax-shelter engineers continue to spin up new dodges every few years."

The top 1% of Americans evade $163 billion in owed taxes annually, the Treasury Department has said.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ar-AA1qvWut

When high-profile figures like Todd and Julie Chrisley of "Chrisley Knows Best" or Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino of "Jersey Shore" get busted for financial crimes such as tax fraud, critics opine that the crimes are common — and that's not untrue.
"There are routine categories of illicit acts that wealthy individuals often endeavor out of sheer greed," Matthew Barhoma, a Los Angeles defense attorney, told Business Insider.

Tax evasion, Barhoma said, is "perhaps the most infamous method."

In a 2021 report, the US Treasury Department estimated that the wealthiest 1% of Americans evade a whopping $163 billion in owed taxes every year. That accounts for about 28% of the total US tax gap — the difference between the amount of taxes owed and the amount taxpayers pay on time.

The Treasury Department said in the report that tax evasion tends to be concentrated among the wealthy, in part, because they can tap accountants and other experts "who help shield them from bearing their true income tax liability."

"Because these individuals know enforcement authorities lack the resources needed to pursue them, the consequences of their underpayments are viewed as minor, and so voluntary compliance rates tend to be lower," the Treasury Department said.

Barhoma said that to avoid paying taxes, high-net-worth people often set up offshore accounts in "tax havens" like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, "where financial secrecy is paramount."

These people, he said, "often will use shell companies to obscure the true ownership of assets, making it difficult for tax authorities to trace the money."

"Such deliberate acts are criminally culpable," Barhoma said.

Tama Kudman, a veteran criminal-defense attorney, said that in cases of tax fraud, people sometimes believe that their schemes are so complex and obscured that they'll never be exposed.

"They feel like it's buried in there so deeply nobody will ever find it because they've got so many assets and they've set up so many fancy sort of shields, like trusts and corporations, and things that are designed to be asset protectors or tax protectors," Kudman said.

And a lot of the time, those offenders are right. But sometimes, they get caught.

"Financial crime can be invisible," Barhoma said. "It takes forensic accounting and high-level review to detect."

Mark Ressler, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said he'd defended many wealthy people facing allegations of tax evasion through the use of illegal tax shelters.

These tax shelters typically involve "convoluted" financial transactions that are intended to "trick the IRS into believing that the transactions have some kind of economic basis — that the sole purpose of these transactions is not just to shield your money from Uncle Sam," said Ressler, a partner at the New York City firm Kasowitz Benson Torres.

The transactions create bogus losses on paper that are used to offset legitimate investment gains, which cuts the overall tax liability, Ressler said.

"Many feature interest-rate swaps, foreign-currency exchanges, shell companies, nominee accounts, and variations on these themes," he said. "The IRS is on point to challenge these efforts, but it's a game of whack-a-mole, as creative tax-shelter engineers continue to spin up new dodges every few years."

Lol. 

$163 billion is meaningless when you’re talking about trillion plus dollar deficits every single fucking year. Maybe they are just pissed because they want to send another $163 billion to Ukraine instead of the $200+ billion they’ve already sent? #SavingDemocracy. 

Yup, assassination attempts happen every day to every political candidate.  Nothing unusual at all.

It makes you wonder, what would happen if a true assassin that had training and skills instead of these apparent amateurs really wanted him gone?  This late in the cycle, who would be the Republican nominee?  Surely it would not be JD Vance?  Is there even a a process for this? 

It really does seem like even with protection he could get "got". 

I think for the GOP, the House GOP members select, in a democratic process.

Lol.

$163 billion is meaningless when you’re talking about trillion plus dollar deficits every single fucking year. Maybe they are just pissed because they want to send another $163 billion to Ukraine instead of the $200+ billion they’ve already sent? #SavingDemocracy.

$163B annually isn't exactly meaningless.

However, the question I often have when I read stories like that is whether they're talking about tax evasion, i.e. using illegal tactics to shield money legitimately owed, or tax avoidance, which is often stretching the tax code up to just before it's breaking point. Because I think often journalists view "I don't like that [legal] method to avoid taxes so I'll accuse someone of illegality because I think it SHOULD be illegal!"

The tax code is complex. So I can see someone saying "That tax loophole was created to protect Amish orphanages from losing their entire operating capital" to which someone else responds, "Yeah, but nowhere did it say that my brothel in Nevada couldn't use it, so I did."

Barhoma said that to avoid paying taxes, high-net-worth people often set up offshore accounts in "tax havens" like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, "where financial secrecy is paramount."
These people, he said, "often will use shell companies to obscure the true ownership of assets, making it difficult for tax authorities to trace the money."
"Such deliberate acts are criminally culpable," Barhoma said.

I'm just saying, that suppose a disgruntled Navy Seal or some other kind of special forces guy just gets fed up with something, and either he decides to take matters into his own hands, or is offered some kind of handsome "I'm not coming back but my family is set" type of payday.  I think in either assassination scenario it was complete amateurs.  The 2nd guy apparently had an AR-15 as a weapon, which in my under-educated opinion makes for a horrible sniper type weapon.  They said he got within a couple hundred feet of the president.  Anybody else, with a line of sight, and Trumps toast.