Source: http://famguardian1.org/TaxFreedom/Forms/Discovery/Deposition/Evidence/Q04.017.htm
Timestamp: 2019-01-24 06:57:57
Document Index: 351729387

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 7201', '§ 7201', '§ 7201', '§ 7201', '§ 7201', '§ 7201', '§ 7201', '§ 7201', '§ 7201', '§ 7201', '§ 7201', '§ 7201', '§ 7201', '§ 7201']

United States v. Waldeck, 909 F.2d 555 (1st Cir. 1990)
On July 15, 1981, defendant filed an Employee's Withholding Allowance Certificate (W-4) with his employer claiming single status and 30 allowances. He had filed two prior W-4s claiming single status with one and then two allowances. On March 15, 1982, defendant's attorney, William D. Morris, wrote to defendant's employer stating that because of the employer- employee relationship, the employer should not release any information about the defendant's employment to any government agency, particularly the IRS, and that the employer should ignore any requests for information unless there was a subpoena, in which event the employer was to notify defendant. [FN1] On May 2, 1982, defendant wrote to the secretary of the employer's legal division and requested that the lawyer's letter be attached to his W-4 and a copy put in his personnel file.
Defendant argues that the indictment should have been dismissed because it was duplicitous and unconstitutionally vague and ambiguous. Except for place of residence and the year, each of the five counts in the indictment are identical. We reproduce Count II.
The pertinent part of § 7201 provides: "Any person who willfully attempts in any manner to evade or defeat any tax imposed by this title or the payment thereof shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of a felony...." In Sansone v. United States, 380 U.S. 343, 85 S.Ct. 1004, 13 L.Ed.2d 882 (1965), the Court held that "the elements of § 7201 are willfulness; the existence of a tax deficiency; and an affirmative act constituting an evasion or attempted evasion of the tax." Id. at 351, 85 S.Ct. at 1010 (citations omitted). One of the defenses considered by the Court in Sansone was that an intent to report and pay the tax in the future constitutes a defense to § 7201. In rejecting this defense the Court stated:
No defense to a § 7201 evasion charge is made out by showing that the defendant willfully and fraudulently understated his tax liability for the year involved but intended to report the income and pay the tax at some later time. As this Court has recognized, § 7201 includes the offense of willfully attempting to evade or defeat the assessment of a tax as well as the offense of willfully attempting to evade or defeat the payment of a tax.
To our knowledge, only two courts of appeals have addressed the issue of whether an indictment alleging violation of § 7201 by stating that defendant did "willfully attempt to evade and defeat the income tax due and owing" has alleged the two separate crimes of evasion of assessment of tax and evasion of payment of tax and therefore is duplicitous. The issue was first addressed by the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Masat, 896 F.2d 88 (5th Cir.1990). In finding that the indictment was not duplicitous, the court held:
The charge in the indictment directly tracked the wording of § 7201. The "two crimes" of which Masat contends he was charged come from one statute, indeed, from one sentence. In truth, there is one crime, the evasion of taxes, and it is of no moment that both assessment and payment might have been evaded. There was no plain error requiring reversal, for the indictment was not duplicitous.
In an even more recent case, United States v. Dunkel, 900 F.2d 105 (7th Cir.1990), the Seventh Circuit came to the same conclusion. It did not completely ignore Sansone, but it did not let it stand in the way of its holding:
Dunkel insists that the charges under § 7201 are duplicitous because that statute creates two crimes: evading the assessment of taxes (as by fooling the IRS about your income) and evading the payment of taxes (as by secreting assets after taxes have been assessed). To charge both in one count, Dunkel maintains, is to confuse both the defendant and the jury. Not so. Section 7201 creates only one crime: tax evasion. Section 7201 makes it a crime to "attempt in any manner to evade or defeat any tax imposed by this title or the payment thereof". Just as you can rob a bank in a dozen ways (blow the door off the vault, tunnel from next door and empty the till in the dead of night, stick up the teller, scoop money out of the cash drawer during business hours when no one is looking, and so on), so you can evade taxes in multiple ways.
Sometimes it is convenient to say that different methods are different "crimes", as the Supreme Court once said about § 7201. Sansone v. United States, 380 U.S. 343, 354, 85 S.Ct. 1004, 1011, 13 L.Ed.2d 882 (1965); see also, United States v. Dack, 747 F.2d 1172, 1174 (7th Cir.1984). Whether § 7201 creates multiple offenses in the sense that one who evades his taxes for a single year both by creative bookkeeping and by transferring assets (as the jury could conclude Dunkel did) could be given cumulative punishment is a different matter entirely. If Dunkel were right, he could be punished twice, so long as the government took care to charge the events of a single year in two counts. We need not decide whether Congress has authorized this. It is enough to say that nothing in the text or history of § 7201 requires an indictment to treat § 7201 as if it were two sections of the United States Code.
In United States v. Connor, 898 F.2d 942 (3d Cir.1990), the court held that defendant's "purposeful failure to file an accurate W-4 form could be viewed by the jury as an affirmative willful act to support the violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7201 comparable to the affirmative acts of evasion outlined in Spies v. United States, 317 U.S. at 499, 63 S.Ct. at 368." Id. at 945.
evidence that Johnson submitted a W-4 form in 1987 claiming more allowances than he was entitled to and did not file an income tax return for 1987, was relevant to show Johnson's willfulness and absence of mistake in filing the Schedule C forms containing false information during the years 1982- 86 [the years charged in indictment].
Id. A fortiori, the filing of false W-4s and returns giving none of the required information for the years charged in the indictment would be even stronger evidence of willfulness. [FN2]
In United States v. Felak, 831 F.2d 794, 798 (8th Cir.1987), the court held that claiming exemptions that were not justified was evidence from which tax evasion under § 7201 could be found.
FN1. The letter stated in pertinent part.
FN2. No comment is necessary on defendant's failure to file any return for 1984.