Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Business taxes: "Hide and Seek" for tax lawyers…

One of my personal advisors reminds me that avoiding payment of taxes is big business for lots of businesses……corporate tax lawyers try to hide income from the tax man, and IRS tax lawyers seek to find that income and collect what's due, along with penalties and interest in many cases.

Now, I'll try to deal fairly with one obvious retort: of course it makes no sense for a company or an individual to pay more tax than is rightly due.

What we're talking about here is use of arcane tax shelters and book-cooking that reduces payment of legitimate tax obligations, and sometimes (not often enough) results in payment of penalties when the tax man catches on.

I won't bother trying to prove this with stats and citations. We all know it happens. It sucks that some highly paid employees actually get paid to try to stiff the IRS, and it sucks that companies are routinely willing to pay the penalties when the tax man sniffs out the chicanery.

For companies that do it, it's a disgusting "cost of doing business" that everyone else ends up paying for…..

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