This just in: New York Times reports that “I.R.S. Pushes Tax Deadline Back One Month” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/business/irs-tax-filing-deadline.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Ben Franklin (and perhaps others) noted that two things are certain in life. The number of certainties has grown: Three things are certain in life. Death and taxes are two of them. The third is tax fraud.
— Matt Pearce, LA Times 4-19-16 and thanks to Bob McKenzie.
In these strange and scary days, now into the fourth week of go-home-and-stay-home, we’re still here. I and the little team that helps me are still working, working from home.
I am reachable by phone, by email, by video conference, mostly zoom. Suddenly it seems we live by zoom, skype, duo, facetime, facebook live, and other apps).
While the IRS has suspended many of its functions due to the coronavirus/covid-19 emergency, it has not stopped. What’s suspended will be the subject of a separate post.
After the suspension ends, the IRS will be ready to resume. At some point “New York on Pause” — and other states “on pause” — will unpause, and business will resume.
Also, New York’s “IRS” — the DTF, Department of Taxation and Finance has also not fully stopped.
We’re still here, and working to make a positive difference in taxpayers’ lives.
This might be called the Case of the Candid Calendar. A Wisconsin bar owner was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison and ordered to pay a $100,000 fine for filing false tax returns.
According to court records, Jared Jerome Hart, 36, of Eau Claire, Wis., owned a tavern called The Pickle Bar. His bar accepted payments only in cash, and at the end of each day, tavern employees would place daily sales in a safe for Hart to pick up. Hart would count the cash, and then record a number for the day in his own daily calendar. Hart would then deposit only some of the cash from into the business account.
Hart gave his accountants the payroll information, bank statements, the check register and vendor invoices. From these records, which Hart knew were incomplete, the accountants created the official books of the bu
siness. Hart never told his accountants about the cash he was “skimming” from the tavern, or the second set of books he was keeping at home. Hart’s daily calendars were discovered during the execution of a search warrant at his home in June 2012.
Between 2008 and 2011, there was more than a $1 million discrepancy between the gross receipts of The Pickle Bar reflected in the books the accountants maintained and the second set of books Hart maintained at his home.
Same Dress, Two Designers? Click on this link to see the flyer announcing the program we’ve put together. A three-credit Continuing Legal Education (CLE) class about protecting intellectual property in the fashion industry. (Non-lawyers are also welcome, for a nominal charge)
New York County Lawyers Association reports that more than 50 people have already signed up to attend, which is huge.
Coming up on September 8, 2011, at 6:00 PM, coinciding with the September 2011 New York City Fashion Week, the Cyberspace Law Committee of New York County Lawyers Association is putting on a Continuing Legal Education course on Intellectual Property protections in the fashion industry.
This course is for both lawyers and non-lawyers (no CLE credit for non-lawyers).
Full Disclosure: I am announcing this event because, in late 2010, I was appointed co-chair of New York County Lawyers’ Associations Cyberspace Law Committee and this is one of our projects.
Course Description:
Celebrate New York Fashion Week by joining us at a special program focusing on protecting intellectual property rights in the fashion industry. While imitation can be considered the highest form of flattery, it can also be costly, harmful to businesses – and even illegal.
Learn the ins and outs of legal protection in the fashion industry, including how Trademark, Copyright and Design-Patent laws can be, and are used, in the United States and in Europe against copying and counterfeiting in the fashion industry.
Special focus will also be given to new legislation, the “Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act” (IDPPA), now pending in Congress.
Faculty:
Program Co-sponsor: NYCLE Cyberspace Committee, Allan Pearlman and Natalie Sulimani, Co-Chairs
Program Chair:Viviana Mura, Herzfeld & Rubin P.C.
Faculty: Prof. Guillermo C. Jimenez, Fashion Institute of Technology and co-author, “Fashion Law, A Guide for Designers, Fashion Executives, and Attorneys”; Viviana Mura, Herzfeld & Rubin P.C.; Joseph Francis Murphy, Law Office of Joseph Francis Murphy, Esq.
For more information go to www.nycla.org or to the specific page for the Same Dress, Two Designers? by clicking here.
It’s been sounding like a love-fest, Howard Stern and satellite radio. First, Sirius crushed its competitor, XM — which it could not have done without the weight of Howard and his loyal listeners. Then the two satellite radio companies merged to become Sirius XM. This has sounded like a love-fest: Howard can do his morning radio show uncensored by regular radio stations, unthreatened by the FCC, and without endless commercials jamming up his show.
Plus, since his first day on satellite radio, in January 2006, Howard has been saying how great it is to be appreciated by his new employer. Again and again, his listeners have heard him say that he’s happy at Sirius, and that the whole set-up on satellite has allowed him and his crew to do the best radio they’ve ever done.
In December 2010, after months of a cliff-hanger for listeners, wondering whether Howard would renew his contract, he re-signed to continue his show for another five years.
But the love-fest — let’s say the honeymoon at least — seems to be over. Today, Howard Stern, through his production company, One Twelve, Inc. (named for his birthday, January 12th), and his agent, Don Buchwald, sued Sirius XM in New York State Supreme Court for breach of contract.
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.
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.
In the wake of master swindler and former NASDAQ chairman, Bernard Madoff’s $65-billion dollar, multi-decade, worldwide Ponzi scheme, it might seem like scams are popping up everywhere one looks..
In this context, in January, 2009, a U.S. Justice Department announcement reports that Ponzi-schemer-or-collaborator Shirley G. Graybill, 72, of North Haven, Conn., was sentenced to two years of probation — the first four months of which she must spend in home confinement. She had pleaded guilty in June, 2005 to one count of making and subscribing to a false 2002 tax return.
What happened between the June 2005 guilty plea and the three-and-a-half-year later sentencing announcement?
According to court records, the Triple Diamond Foundation was an entity created by Graybill and her husband, Dale L. Graybill, purportedly to fund cancer research, but which did not have tax-exempt status from the IRS. The Graybills controlled the Triple Diamond Foundation and its bank account. And apparently, they were quite adept at using that bank account. (more…)