Jack Townsend of the Federal Tax Crimes Blog has a post on United States v. Hom today. In his post, he notes that Mr. Hom represented himself. Indeed, the court is still looking for a pro bono counsel to represent Mr. Hom:
Defendant John Hom is not indigent and therefore does not qualify for appointment of pro bono counsel with the Court’s federal pro bono project. This tax action, however, involves novel questions of law regarding the interpretation of the Bank Secrecy Act and related regulations. Accordingly, the Court seeks counsel to volunteer to represent defendant on a pro bono basis for the remainder of this action. Pro bono counsel will be allowed to re-brief the pending summary judgment motion, which is currently held under submission. In addition, a case management schedule has not yet been set.
If any counsel is willing to volunteer to represent defendant, please email the undersigned judge’s courtroom deputy, Dawn Toland, at whacrd@cand.uscourts.gov by JUNE 12, 2014.
While Mr. Townsend notes that the Court applied the duck test, I remain unconvinced that the Court got this right. It did if you had to decide that all three foreign accounts in this case were foreign financial accounts or none were; however, if the Court could look at each individually the Court likely would have come to a different conclusion.
In any case, as of today we’re stuck with this decision. And no, I haven’t heard from the FBAR group at the IRS yet.
Tags: FBAR