Taxable Talk

While we wait for the Loving appeal decision to come out, yet another reminder that not all licensed tax professionals are ethical. Here, we just have allegations of fraud, so it is definitely possible that the alleged villain of the story is innocent. Nevertheless, the story is too rich to not bring up.

Anyway, from Portland, Oregon, comes the indictment of Steven Cyr. Mr. Cyr is a tax attorney. He’s been charged with two felony counts of overstating the expenses on his own tax returns (for 2006 and 2007). According to a story in Willamette Week, Mr. Cyr reported expenses of $524,678 in 2006 and $408,767 in 2007; the indictment alleges that the total expense figures are inflated. Mr. Cyr is also being investigated by the Oregon Bar.

In any case, this indictment also shows that the IRS does have means of going after tax professionals who do commit crimes. If I were to commit tax crimes, the IRS can sue me and bar me from ever preparing tax returns. They can being proceedings to revoke my license–my license comes from the federal government. If I do something truly rotten, I can be indicted for those crimes.

The idea that just because people have licenses that they will all suddenly go the straight and narrow is laughable. There were tax crimes years ago; there will be tax crimes in the years that follow…licensing or not.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 6th, 2013 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Oregon, Tax Fraud. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.