Opinion ID: 179430
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Tax Rate

Text: Edkins next claims that the district court incorrectly calculated the total tax loss with respect to his unfiled 1998 tax return by accepting the IRS’s calculation rather than applying a 20% tax rate. Where an offense involves a failure to file a tax return, “the tax loss shall be treated as equal to 20% of the gross income . . . unless a more accurate determination of the tax loss can be made.” U.S.S.G. § 2T1.1(c)(2)(A). “These presumptions apply unless the parties provide sufficient information for a more accurate assessment of tax loss.” United States v. Harris, 200 F. App’x 472, 495 (6th Cir. 2006) (citing U.S.S.G. § 2T1.1(c)(2)(A) cmt. n.1). The government calculated Edkins’s tax rate by examining Edkins’s and Baby Bliss’s banking records, including records of transfers from Baby Bliss’s accounts to Edkins’s personal accounts, and then applying standard adjustments and the standard tax rate. Edkins objects, maintaining that the 1998 tax loss cannot be accurately determined “because in 1998 there were no records by which to compute all of the deductions, exemptions, and credits to which he was entitled.” Edkins still has not filed a tax return for 1998, nor does he identify any specific deduction, exemption, or credit that the government failed to apply. The fact that Edkins (had he filed a return) may have taken advantage of additional deductions, exemptions, or credits does not prevent the government’s calculation—using bank records, standard deductions, and a standard tax rate—from being “more accurate” than application of a flat rate to Edkins’s gross income. See United States -9- No. 08-2605 United States v. Edkins v. Delfino, 510 F.3d 468, 473 (4th Cir. 2007) (explaining that the law does not require the district court to speculate as to what deductions the defendant may have been entitled to had he completed his tax returns). The district court did not clearly err in sanctioning this method of calculating Edkins’s 1998 tax liability.