Blog

As many already know, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines play a pivotal role in criminal cases, whether determining a client's pre-indictment exposure, negotiating plea agreements, evaluating presentence investigation reports, and when advocating for someone at a sentencing hearing. Since the Supreme...

For the past fifteen years—since the government's enforcement initiatives directed at foreign account reporting compliance—the IRS has often imposed massive financial penalties for a taxpayer's failure to include Forms 5471 with his or her tax return.  Form 5471 is filed annually to report one's ...

Yesterday, in Bittner vs. United States, 598 U.S. ______ (2023), the Supreme Court resolved a split between the Ninth and Fifth Circuits on the question of whether penalties for non-willful FBAR violations accrue on a per-report or per-violation (i.e., per-account) basis.  The facts of the Bittne...

A memorandum issued last month by the IRS's Acting Director for Collection Policy sets out interim guidance for IRS Revenue Officers (the IRS personnel responsible for collecting assessed tax and/or penalty liabilities) in connection with various international tools available to collect taxpayer ...

Earlier today (Nov. 30, 2022), the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a precedential opinion that invalidates the “intended loss” provision described in the Application Notes to Section 2B1.1 of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.  See United States v. Banks, Case Nos. 19-3812 & 20-2235 (3...

Earlier this month the IRS announced sweeping penalty relief for millions of taxpayers who filed their 2019 and/or 2020 tax returns late.  See IRS Notice 2022-36; IR-2022-155.  The relief is targeted at taxpayers who may have struggled in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is not limited t...

In an opinion filed yesterday in the Southern District of New York, U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil denied a motion for summary judgment filed by the government that sought a ruling that a taxpayer's failure to file an FBAR was willful as a matter of law, rejecting the government's position...

For decades the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) division has provided an opportunity for taxpayers with previously undisclosed income or other tax issues to voluntarily contact the IRS, disclose the problem, and resolve any issues with a civil settlement.  As long as a voluntary disclosure is...

As many tax controversy practitioners have learned since the advent of the first IRS Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP), some cases just won't die, even since the OVDP's sunset in 2018.  Some cases turned out to be very complex, other cases involved long tortuous procedures to obtain th...

The IRS will now allow practitioners representing taxpayers with IRS matters to obtain 30 client transcripts per call to the Practitioner Priority Service (PPS) hotline (although it can of course take a lifetime to actually get through to someone via the hotline).  The new limit was announced in ...

A recent criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) is of special interest to me for two reasons.  First, I worked in the EDNY for about nine years, initially as part of the Clerk's Office staff and, following law school, as a judicial law clerk.  Second, the case involve...

In an issue of first impression in the Second Circuit, a trial court in the District of Connecticut earlier this week held that the $10,000 statutory cap for non-willful FBAR violations must be calculated on a per FBAR form basis and not based on the number of non-compliant accounts.   United St...