Court Opinion

ID: 9459286
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:16:18.321691+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:06.445625
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring):
As to part II, I concur in the result that reversal is required but on grounds different from those given by Judge Roney. The offense charged is that the defendants jointly engaged in the business of accepting wagers and attempted to evade and defeat wagering excise tax due and owing by their partnership by filing false and fraudulent (individual) returns on which their combined gross wagers were less than in fact they were. Defendants did not file partnership returns, were not charged with failure to do so and, under Marchetti1 and Grosso2 could not be so charged. But those cases do not forgive a taxpayer (partnership or individual) who accepts wagers from liability for the tax. Nor do those cases insulate partners from criminal responsibility for efforts to evade the tax so long as the effort which is the basis for criminal responsibility is not a mere failure to file a partnership return. In this instance the charge is that the effort to evade partnership tax took the form of understatement of partnership wagers on the individual returns voluntarily filed. The offense thus charged is no less an offense than to charge perjury committed before a grand jury by a witness who could not be required to testify but elected voluntarily to do so, and no less an offense than voluntarily sending to IRS, in an attempt to evade partnership taxes, a false affidavit stating, “We swear that we have ceased our partnership wagering operations, so please don’t bother us any more about partnership taxes.”
To sustain its theory the government was required to come forward with proof (1) that the individual returns included some partnership wagers, or, conversely, that the individuals did not do as much individual wagering as the returns said, leading to an inference that the excess was composed of partnership wagers, and (2), that partnership wagers included in the total of wagers re*577ported were less than all the partnership wagers.3 The government did not come forward with evidence required of it. The record shows that the defendants accepted $41,329 of partnership wagers .and that the combined amount of the individual returns was $33,447. But for all we know, the returns included only individual wagers and no partnership wagers. The government cannot, as it attempts to do, shift to defendants the obligation to prove the correctness of the returns or face conviction. In this criminal case there is no presumption of governmental correctness as with a civil assessment.
The convictions must be reversed, not . for failure to charge an offense but for failure to prove the offense charged, and the case should be remanded for further proceedings.

. Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 88 S.Ct. 697, 19 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968).

. Grosso v. United States, 390 U.S. 62, 88 S.Ct. 709, 19 L.Ed.2d 906 (1968).

. AYe need not face the question of whether (1) alone would constitute an offense— that is, arguably misleading the government by reporting partnership wagers on an individual return without regard to whether such misreporting is of all partnership wagers or less than all. The indictment here charges an underreporting.
Also it seems to me that evidence of (1) alone is not sufficient to shift to the • taxpayer the burden of coming forward with evidence either that no partnership wagers are included in the return, or that
some are included and that those so included are all of the partnership wagers. The burden remains on the government to prove what it alleged, which is understatement of partnership wagers, and the taxpayer, whether he reported only partnership bets or mingled partnership and individual bets, cannot be required to adduce evidence that he did not understate. Thus, until the government had come forward with evidence on (1) and (2), the defendants were not required to rebut.