IRS and Florida Tax Crimes

Over the last five years the IRS, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Florida Attorney General have been more aggressive in pursuing delinquent taxpayers and bringing criminal charges against them for tax fraud, failure to file tax returns, failure to pay taxes, failure to remit sales taxes and a host of other tax crimes.

One of the reasons for this increase in aggressiveness is that the IRS estimates that more than $300 billion in revenues are lost every year as a result of tax evasion and taxpayer negligence.

It is politically less dangerous for Congress to pursue delinquent taxpayers than it is for it to increase taxes on taxpayers who have historically complied with the law.

In the last two and a half years, our office has seen a threefold increase in the number of criminal and grand jury investigations for criminal tax evasion. We not only expect this increase to continue, we expect it to continue at a growing rate.

This section of our website is dedicated to educating taxpayers and tax practitioners in the intricacies, complexities and pitfalls of criminal tax jurisprudence. In this connection, we have developed the following sections which provide specific guidance on a range of related criminal tax topics:

  1. Federal Tax Crimes – This section provides our readers with detailed information on all criminal tax statutes
  2. Elements of Tax Crimes - This section discusses the elements the government needs to prove in order to establish that a crime has been committed. Not all mistakes in filing tax returns or paying taxes are criminal.
  3. Criminal Tax Procedure – Once completed, this section takes the reader on a detailed journey through the various steps of the criminal tax process – from the initial referral of a case to IRS criminal investigation division (CID) to the sentencing phase of a criminal tax case.
  4. Preventative Measures – This section describes those actions a taxpayer might take to prevent a criminal tax referral and/or a criminal tax indictment. They include, but are not limited to, the filing of amended returns, the payment of delinquent taxes, cooperation with IRS auditors and prosecutors and participation in the IRS’s voluntary disclosure program.
  5. Grand Jury Investigations – This section discusses the grand jury process.
  6. Federal Sentencing Guidelines – This section deals only with taxpayers who have been found guilty of a tax crime at trial or have pled guilty to a tax crime. It contains a complete discussion of the federal sentencing guidelines and a detailed explanation of how the government’s “tax loss” is to be calculated.
  7. Role of Counsel – This section discusses the role of criminal tax lawyers and why finding the right lawyer may help you avoid an indictment and/or jail time.