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So far Allan has created 70 blog entries.
22 04, 2010

Panel Discussion on Website Privacy Policies, Terms of Use and Service and Disclaimers Tuesday April 27, 2010

By |2020-02-12T14:20:18-05:00April 22nd, 2010|Uncategorized|0 Comments

This is in the non-tax-related area of law:

I’m writing to tell you about – and invite you to come to – a free panel discussion (aka “Public Forum”) on a topic important to anyone who runs or wants to run a website or blog, and to lawyers who advise website owners or bloggers, or both.

A little more information: The forum is entitled:

Click on the Dotted Line:

Internet Website Privacy Policies,

Terms of Use and Service, and Disclaimers —

Can all that stuff you never read actually hurt you?”

 

It’s taking place on Tuesday April 27, 2010 at 6 PM at New York County Lawyers’ Association (NYCLA), which is downtown, near City Hall, at 14 Vesey Street, New York, NY. NYCLA’s Cyberspace Law Committee is putting on this forum and I will be moderating it.

What’s it about? This forum will discuss the enforceability of website terms, good practices in developing those terms, as well as pitfalls for website owners, businesses, and their attorneys in identifying issues, developing policies, and drafting the “fine print” terms for websites.

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28 03, 2010

Another bogus email pretends to be from IRS

By |2020-02-12T14:20:18-05:00March 28th, 2010|Internet tax scam, phishing|0 Comments

Criminals who dress up as cops sometimes get a whole lot of crimes done. Similarly, internet email scamsters have been pretending to be the Internal Revenue Service for a while as well.

In this scam, a criminal sends an email which is supposed to look like it’s from the IRS. This fraudulent email asks you to click on a link to review your account, get a refund, or something, but the goal is actually to extract from your personal information, by which your identity can be stolen, or to commit some other nefarious crime which will only hurt you (like perhaps to take control of your computer and use it as a zombie bot which becomes an unwitting conduit for spam).

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21 03, 2010

Portland Pastor Pleads to Pretend Receipts Pumping Up Expense Tally

By |2020-02-12T14:20:18-05:00March 21st, 2010|Tax Crimes|0 Comments

A religious leader in Vancouver, Washington has a lot of atoning to do for his less-than-spiritual relationship to material things and the lure of filthy lucre.

Until last September, Maximo Garza, 47, was the pastor for Victory Outreach Church of Portland, a non-denominational church which has operated in Portland, Oregon, for more than 15 years. Garza was sentenced to five months in prison for aiding the preparation of a false tax return.

During his plea hearing, Garza admitted he provided false expense invoices which purported to reflect public relations and other services provided by Victory Outreach Church to William Thompson, who was then operating a mail-order divorce service using the name Hallwood Inc.

Thompson used the false invoices to take expense deductions on tax returns filed by Hallwood in order to fraudulently reduce his tax liability. Thompson pled guilty to tax evasion and was sentenced to a prison term in 2007.

Between 2001 and 2003, Garza provided invoices reflecting a total of $735,441 in false business expenses. Thompson agreed to let Garza keep approximately 10% of the expense amounts.

3 03, 2010

Dare to Compare: T-men v. G-men

By |2020-02-12T14:20:18-05:00March 3rd, 2010|IRS News, IRS Power|0 Comments

Where are those scarce government resources going?

The Internal Revenue Service employs approximately 88,000 full time staff. This is two and a half times as many as the FBI.

Then, what about Spies v. Bean counters? Incomparable! The number of the CIA’s staff cannot “at present, be publicly disclosed.”   So says cia.gov.

28 02, 2010

Russian Con-Artist Faked “File Free” Tax Return Websites, Stole Refunds

By |2020-02-12T14:20:19-05:00February 28th, 2010|Data Security, Identity Theft, Tax Crimes, Tax Refund|0 Comments

Marketing experts say that there are few words as powerful to persuade as “free.” One enterprising scamster took that concept and ran with it to steal unsuspecting taxpayers’ tax refunds.

While living in sunny San Diego, Maxim Maltsev of Russia, blended the persuasive power of the word “free” with the fact that the IRS has a free electronic tax return filing program, and harnessed the awesome reach of the Internet, to steal tax refunds owed to ordinary taxpayers, looking to get their returns prepared and filed as quickly, easily and cheaply as possible.

Maltsev admitted in federal court in California that he was part of a conspiracy to obtain federal income tax returns requesting refunds before they were electronically filed with the IRS.

The success of the scheme depended upon taxpayers being fooled into using apparently free electronic tax return filing services which were, in fact, fake.

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22 09, 2009

IRS Extends Voluntary Disclosure Deadline for Secret Offshore Accounts

By |2020-02-12T14:20:19-05:00September 22nd, 2009|IRS Collection, IRS Enforcement, IRS News, IRS Power, Tax Crimes, Uncategorized|1 Comment

With 48 hours left before the final deadline to participate in a voluntary disclosure program designed get taxpayers with unreported foreign bank accounts to come back into the system and report their foreign income, the IRS has announced that it is extending the deadline from Wednesday September 23, 2009 until October 15, 2009.

The IRS reports that this extension was made in response to repeated requests from attorneys and other tax practitioners from all over the country.

In addition, an IRS agent working on a team evaluating the disclosures being submitted by taxpayers trying to participate in this program told me that there was a huge volume of submissions.

Within the guidelines of this program, taxpayers are given an opportunity to avoid criminal prosecution for tax crimes such as tax evasion and tax fraud.

Also, as part of this program, a taxpayer is subject to paying penalties on previously unreported income in foreign bank accounts under guidelines defined earlier this year, in March 2009. These guidelines are tough and expensive, but not nearly as tough or expensive as the sort of penalties a taxpayer would be facing if not working within this program.

9 09, 2009

New Scam Email Claiming to be From IRS is Fake

By |2020-02-12T14:20:19-05:00September 9th, 2009|Identity Theft|0 Comments

The Internal Revenue Service flatly states about its own practices: “The IRS does not send taxpayers e-mails about their tax accounts.”

So, if your email in-box has a message saying that its from “Internal Revenue Service [no-reply@irs.gov]” with a subject line of “Notice of Underreported Income” you  can know, from the start, that this message is a fake.

This message is apparently being sent to gazillions of email addresses.

The text of one I received today reads as follows:

Taxpayer ID: arp-0000174073547US

Tax Type: INCOME TAX

Issue: Unreported/Underreported Income (Fraud Application)

Please review your tax statement on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website (click on link below):

review tax statement for taxpayer id: arp-0000174073547US

Internal Revenue Service

This is plainly a fake, and a scam, probably designed to steal the recipient’s identity, or install malicious software on the recipient’s computer.

Steve Ragan of The Tech Herald (thetechherald.com) reports that this bogus message is being sent out at a rate approaching 90,000 an hour, and that the goal of it is, in fact, to trick computer users to install malicious software onto their computers.

So the quick thought here: don’t fall for it, don’t click on the link in this bogus email which is designed to do harm.

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