Saturday, March 28, 2009

Did I Hear You Say That There Must Be a Catch

"No tax denier has achieved more prominence than Irwin Schiff, the man whose writings helped spark Peter Hendrickson’s initial hostility toward the income tax. Schiff started his professional life conventionally enough: he ran an insurance brokerage firm in Connecticut. But after he lost his and his clients’ money in the late 1960s in a tax shelter that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, he entered the netherworld of the nascent tax-honesty movement. While many tax deniers at the time were farmers in the Dakotas who were responding to a foreclosure crisis, Schiff, who held an accounting degree from the University of Connecticut, had an aura of economic expertise.
"Schiff also had the spirit—and business ethics—of a carnival barker."

In The New York Times, Jason Zengerle goes deep inside the shadowy world of tax resisters.

1 comment:

Thoreau said...

It is laughable that many decry the bankrupt U.S. system yet those who run it are tax cheats. Interesting, the malfeasance of the government knows no bounds. Palin is a tax cheat yet gets to live in the lime light and have continued substantive impact on the lack of justice system that exists in the U.S. Of course obviousness of Palin’s thievery on taxes is irrefutable just review her tax returns wherein she not only stole from the government she helps run by under reporting income and taking false tax deductions but she cheated the state of Alaska by filing phony expense reimbursement reports (and was actually compensated by the state for staying at her own home). Though Palin’s thievery is nothing in the context of Geithner or Mike Hamersley the high level government tax shelter lawyer who goes around confiscating income from honest citizens. Hamersley is perhaps the worst offender of all as he is a nationally renowned tax crusader who based on his own definition of tax fraud to the U.S. Senate purveyed massive tax fraud against the government he now works for utilizing sham foreign paper transactions to generate 100s of millions of phony tax deductions for his clients at KPMG. Of course KPMG, committed massive corporate tax fraud for its clients like the now bankrupt Citi. Though in defense of KPMG, the massive corporate tax fraud it purveyed pales in comparison to the financial statement fraud it engaged for its banking clients like Citi by falsely clearing balance sheets with Tier 3 sham investments and intentionally misevaluating sham derivative contracts such that the financial system crumbled and the costs to the citizens will run into the Trillions while all the while those that run KPMG like Tim Flynn earn their multimillion salaries from the high audit fees paid by their banking clients for issuing fraudulent financial statements which effectively the American people are now funding since if Citi was allowed to fail, KPMG would be out of business and Flynn would end up in the poor house instead of making millions. It is an awesome system if you are one of those like Flynn pulling the strings and defrauding the American people. Ask Flynn about his fraudulent Bermuda captive insurance company, Park, which is a sham paper company used to generate 100s of millions in phony tax losses for KPMG partners (just like it does for its corporate clients) and cheat future partners out of profits by deferring settlement payments for years through sham contracts devised by Claudia Taft of KPMG.