Tax Controversies

What constitutes a bank? The answer to that question is not as clear as it used to be. Recent years have seen growth in the variety of financial institutions seeking to hold bank status and just such a legal challenge is one that will be getting a hearing this week in Washington. The matter is […]

The tax code is a bloated tangle of inscrutable rules and regulations that is Greek to even some of the most highly trained professionals. That being the case, no one expects you to have a fully developed grasp of every way in which a divorce will affect your tax liability. But even without a complete […]

The big talk of the nation’s capitol today, at least from a business perspective, is the guilty plea that Credit Suisse has entered into to resolve U.S. criminal charges. Switzerland’s second-largest bank entered the plea yesterday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. The charge by prosecutors was that the company conspired for decades to help […]

Due process is held out as one of the cornerstone guarantees of the U.S. Constitution. What it is generally understood to mean is that the government can’t exercise punitive action against a person merely on suspicion of wrongdoing. Under that concept, actions such as the seizure of money or assets should not happen unless the […]

A synonym for the word controversy is dispute. And nothing feeds dispute more than when those involved in an argument can’t agree on what it is they are arguing about. Take for example the case of Bitcoin. Bitcoin has only existed for a few years. Most readers in the Washington area probably don’t have anything […]

Back in November we posted about the fact that entertainer Tina Turner had reportedly signed the paperwork to give up her U.S. Citizenship in favor of staying in Switzerland. The reason given at the time is that she had married her Swiss partner in July, but there was some speculation that the growing burden of […]

The King of Pop is dead, but he is far from out of the limelight. Attracting attention currently is a battle between the estate of Michael Jackson and the Internal Revenue Service over the value of intangible assets. Attempting to assign a value to such ethereal things as intangibles is always difficult, but that doesn’t […]

Soul singer Tina Turner has voluntarily relinquished her U.S. citizenship. She reportedly signed the papers at the U.S Embassy in Bern, Switzerland, late last month. It probably didn’t come as a major surprise. She had announced her plans to do so back in January. Why did she do it? On the face of things it […]

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been focusing our attention on the effects the government shutdown is having on taxpayers. For taxpayers who may be facing the dread of an Internal Revenue Service audit, the shutdown has likely provided a bit of a cushion against the stress, temporary as it might be. As we […]

ne of the largest initiatives by the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Justice Department to enforce tax laws may be about to get a boost. According to recent reports, there are a number of large Swiss banks lining up to cooperate with U.S. efforts in identifying Americans who may hold funds in non-compliant foreign bank […]