Tag archives: tax-evasion

In general the Internal Revenue Code provides that no action may be maintained more than six years after the commission of a criminal tax violation.
However, the Court has ruled that the statute does not necessarily begin when the tax return was filed or should have been filed.

A taxpayer requested the trial court to instruct the jury that the willful failure to pay a tax is a lesser included offense of the charge of tax evasion. The trial court committed reversible error by refusing the taxpayer's requested instruction.

Generally, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are based upon tax loss. The definition normally does not include interest and penalties. However, when a taxpayer is convicted of a tax offense in which he attempted to evade payment of the tax, interest and penalties, the Court may include interest and penalties in its calculation of tax loss.

Plea agreements often call for the Defendant to plead guilty to certain counts of the indictment and for the government to dismiss the remaining counts. Occasionally, the government asserts that the Defendant has violated the plea agreement and the United States seeks to re-indict the counts it has dismissed. However, if this occurs after the defendant has been sentenced and has served his sentence, due process requires the government to move for the Court to declare the defendant in violation of the plea agreement and grant the government leave to convene the grand jury to re-indict the defendant on the charges previously dismissed. The government cannot summarily declare the defendant in breach of the plea agreement and re-indict him without a determination by the court. This situation occurred in the following tax case.