Opinion ID: 203577
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Person Subject to the Tax Code.

Text: The defendant's next plaint relates to the district court's supposed failure to recognize the absence of any proof that he was a person subject to the tax code. Because this plaint makes its debut on appeal, [1] our review is for plain error. See United States v. Leahy, 473 F.3d 401, 410 (1st Cir.2007). The defendant's argument has two facets. First, he reasons that being a person subject to the tax code is an element of the offense of tax evasion, which the evidence failed to establish. This reasoning rests on a faulty premise. The elements of the offense of tax evasion are the existence of a tax deficiency, an affirmative act of evasion or attempted evasion, and a showing of willfulness. See Sansone v. United States, 380 U.S. 343, 351, 85 S.Ct. 1004, 13 L.Ed.2d 882 (1965). Consequently, being a person subject to the tax code is not per se an element of this offense. Of course, the government had to prove that the defendant was subject to the Internal Revenue Code in order to prove a tax deficiency. The evidence, however, taken in the light most favorable to the verdict (as it must be), established that the defendant was a citizen and resident of Rhode Island; that he conducted business there; that his business earned sufficient income to require him to file a federal income tax return for each of the years in question; and that no such returns were filed. That was enough to render the defendant a person subject to the tax code. See 26 U.S.C. § 6012. The second facet of the defendant's argument suffers from the same infirmities. He assails the district court for neglecting to charge the jury that being a person subject to the tax code is an element of the offense of tax evasion but, as noted above, such instruction would have been incorrect. Here, moreover, the defendant did not request a jury instruction on this point, nor did he argue this theory of defense to the jury. The district court instructed the jury that, in order to convict, it must find that the defendant had a substantial tax due and owing. That charge necessarily required the jury to determine, as a condition precedent to a guilty verdict, that the defendant was a person subject to the tax code. No more was exigible. See United States v. George, 448 F.3d 96, 100 (1st Cir.2006) (Where a defendant does not offer a particular instruction, and does not rely on the theory of the defense embodied in that instruction at trial, the district court's failure to offer an instruction sua sponte is not plain error. (quoting United States v. Montgomery, 150 F.3d 983, 996 (9th Cir.1998))).