Taxable Talk

If you want to go to prison for tax evasion, there’s an easy method: Withhold payroll taxes and don’t remit them to the IRS or your state tax agency. The government investigates all such actions (or should I say inactions). One New York businessman will likely have some time to think that over.

Patrick White is the owner of R & L Construction in Yonkers, New York. He liked his home and he liked to gamble. There’s nothing wrong with that. He took payroll taxes withheld from his business and used that money for his homes and for gambling. There’s a lot wrong with that, especially when it totals $3,758,000. Mr. White pleaded guilty to one count of failing to pay over payroll taxes to the government. He’ll be sentenced in May.

This is a good time to point out that if you are a business owner, you should check to make sure your payroll taxes are being sent to the IRS. You can do so by using EFTPS. You’re personally liable for those taxes, so it’s worth verifying the money makes its way where it belongs. If you use employee leasing (a PEO), you can’t verify this by EFTPS so you will need to find a different method of doing so.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2015 at 10:55 am and is filed under Payroll Taxes, Tax Evasion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.