Complexity is complexity. If the write offs exist and you think you qualify so you take them, and then it turns out that there was an exception on page 28,274 of the amended tax code that meant you didn't quality but you took the write off anyway, welcome to jail.
Not if they claim the violation was intentional. Which, whether or not they can prove that, means they can arrest you, and deplete the money you'd have used for your defense as bail. And they do so enjoy that trick where "intentional" generally applies to whether you intentionally did a thing that was against the law, even if you didn't know that it was against the law.
Let's also not so easily dismiss as unproblematic a conclusion that you owe five times more money than you actually have in back taxes plus penalties and interest, which someone wouldn't have who filed the same tax return as you but didn't raise the ire of anyone in power.
> Due to the complexity of the tax code, there is a very high bar for criminality.
If only all of the complex laws actually worked that way.
A prosecutor wanting to give someone a hard time would choose tax law as the mechanism only if the amount in contention was large, e.g. it was against a business owner. You don't think a judge would issue a warrant in a case alleging million dollar intentional tax fraud?
No, because charges for violating tax laws must originate from the tax authority, i.e., the IRS for federal taxes. Prosecutors don't have the authority to file charges for tax law violations on their own.
My suspicion is that felony tax fraud would not have been charged there, or maybe even investigated, if he hadn't been implicated in the death of George Floyd. They had their man so they found his crimes.
Obviously nobody is going to feel sorry for him, but only getting charged with something because you became a political target over something else entirely is exactly the problem in general. Registering your car in a lower tax state may not be legal but it's not exactly uncommon, and plenty of people probably don't even realize it's illegal.
What world do you live in where you think that someone who hasn't filed 3 straight years of tax returns wouldn't be charged with a crime?
Also, to note: the filing of these charges is unrelated to the Floyd case. Based on the article you linked, there were years of financials that the investigators would have had to go through in order to substantiate the charges they filed. They had to investigate ownership of multiple homes, multiple cars in multiple states, and correspond with tax authorities in several states.
This isn't an investigation that they just trumped up because of the Flloyd case; just the correspondence part alone would have taken months, and these charges were filed less than 8 weeks after the Floyd incident based on a substantial record of tax violations.
Chauvin was already on their radar for tax fraud. Politics had nothing to do with it.
Registering your car in a lower tax state may not be legal but it's not exactly uncommon, and plenty of people probably don't even realize it's illegal.
True, but they're not charged with tax fraud because they failed to pay use taxes. RTFA. They were charged with tax fraud for falsely changing their state of tax residency so that they could avoid Minnesota sales/use taxes despite all evidence showing they were still Minnesota residents.
TLDR: Chauvin was not a political target. He was just a bad apple, and in addition to beating suspects was also a tax fraud.
The IRS generally just asks for the money back. You would have to ignore their requests before any criminal prosecution. If that is not the case your doing something more than just making a mistake when it comes to a deduction.
