Taxable Talk

Arthur Weiss had a successful business running various professional employer organizations (PEOs). For a fee, his business would pay employees, remit taxes to the IRS and states, file tax returns, and provide workers compensation insurance. It turns out his fee was slightly larger than advertised.

Mr. Weiss did take in all the money, and he did pay employees. It was was the remitting of payroll taxes to the government that he didn’t like to do. Instead, he lived the good life enjoying jewelry, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porsches. The amount of payroll taxes not remitted to just the IRS was over $4 million.

But that’s not all! The workers compensation premiums also lined Mr. Weiss’ pockets, so employees who got hurt weren’t covered (nor were employers).

But there’s more! Mr. Weiss decided to commit insurance fraud. He reported four pieces of jewelry worth $177,480 lost or stolen. They were found during a search of his former home. Oops….

Like a bad informercial, there’s yet even one more crime: bank fraud. Mr. Weiss decided to get some loans. Instead of showing the tax returns he submitted to the IRS, he made up new returns which, of course, showed more income than he reported.

Sooner or later this fraud was bound to be discovered. And it was, with Mr. Weiss indicted last June. He pleaded guilty in October. He was sentenced last week to more than 15 years at ClubFed. He also must make restitution of $7 million to his victims. Given that bankruptcy fraud was among the crimes he was accused of, it’s likely restitution will be a long time in coming.

This brings up the key point of this case: If you use an outside payroll company, you must make sure they remit your payroll taxes. For the IRS, there’s an easy way to do this. Simply enroll in EFTPS, and you can verify that the payroll deposits are being made. “Trust but verify” is a good motto when dealing with payroll. Why is this important? Because paying payroll taxes is bad enough the first time; to have to pay them twice is very bad. Yet if your payroll company does what Mr. Weiss did (abscond with the payroll deposits), that’s what will happen to you. A one-time registration followed by periodic checking up which takes just a few seconds can prevent this.

Note that this is not doable for a PEO. Please look at my new post on PEOs.

I’m sure many of Mr. Weiss’s clients wish they had done this.

As I’ve said repeatedly, if you want to get in trouble with the IRS simply don’t remit payroll taxes that have been withheld to the government. You are certain to be investigated, and if any wrongdoing is found the investigation will quickly turn into a criminal probe. This story is about a rather

Nasheba Necia Hunte and Elmo Antonio George formed Winco Holdings Inc in Florida. George and Hunte were the only officers of Winco. They had no employees and paid no wages. Yet Winco filed employment tax returns for 2005-2007 showing substantial tax withholdings…withholdings that never happened. They even sent a rubber check for $1,676,991.16 to the IRS for Winco’s non-existent payroll tax obligations. The check was returned, “contact maker for authority to pay.”

The scheme gets more complex. The pair filed corporate tax returns for 2005 and 2006 that had phony partnership losses passing through to the owners as individuals. This generated refunds of $241,807. These funds were deposited into yet another entity, Dikingdom. The funds were used to buy a home in Georgia; George deeded the home to the “Overseer of Dikingdom” and claimed a church owned the property.

Ms. Hunte then made the not-so-brilliant decision to lie to investigators from IRS Criminal Investigation; she told them she wasn’t who she was. She also changed her address to a non-existent address.

In the end, this was all for naught. The pair were arrested for conspiracy to defraud the IRS and were tried and convicted. Both were also found guilty of two counts of filing false tax returns. She was sentenced last week to 51 months at ClubFed and must make restitution of just over $229,000 to the IRS.

My helpful advice to those considering schemes to defraud the IRS related to payroll withholding: Don’t. Sooner or later, usually sooner, the IRS will investigate and your scheme will fall apart.

One of the recurring themes of this blog is that a business owner must pay his payroll taxes. The government considers Trust Fund taxes to be their money and they will always investigate payroll tax crimes.

Similarly, workers compensation is sometimes run through government and pseudo-government agencies. In California, there is the State Compensation Insurance Fund. The State Fund is a non-profit public-enterprise fund run like a mutual insurance company. However, it was created by the state of California. That makes it a pseudo-government agency. It’s a very bad idea to commit fraud against the government; it’s even worse to get caught.

George Osumi II has a construction business in Irvine. He apparently has his workers compensation insurance through State Fund. Mr. Osumi allegedly had a unique and, if proven, quite illegal method of lowering his insurance costs: He reported on his workers compensation report $3.5 million less in payroll than his actual payroll. That did allegedly save him several hundred thousand dollars in insurance costs. It’s also a felony. And since Mr. Osumi is alleged to have done underreported his wages 18 times, that’s 18 felony counts.

Adding to Mr. Osumi’s problems is that he is also alleged to have withheld state taxes and not remitted them. State tax agencies are just as certain to go after business owners as the IRS if you don’t remit withheld taxes. In total, Mr. Osumi faces 71 felony counts including perjury (he’s alleged to have lied to the State Contractor’s Board in stating that his business did not require workers compensation insurance), identity theft, and a host of state tax charges. Mr. Osumi is looking at up to 63 years in prison if found guilty on all the charges.

News Reports: OC Register, Daily Pilot