This case concerns whether Weisselberg and other Trump employees evaded paying income taxes on nonwage compensation received from the Trump Organization.
In the case of Weisselberg, the nonwage compensation included: leased Mercedes-Benzes, an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, as well as tuition for private schools for his grandchildren.
Weisselberg worked for the Trump Organization for over 50 years, having begun his career working for Trump’s father. Weisselberg, as the saying goes, is like a family member. So you can appreciate how it might seem like a shady area of existing and current tax law regarding whether these nonwage benefits are taxable as ordinary income under the current Tax Code.
And keep in mind, of the Tax Code, even for accountants and tax lawyers, is so ridiculously complex and contradictory that it has been shown time and time again that if you were to line up five experienced CPAs and five expert tax attorneys and asked them each to calculate the taxes owed on a moderately complex income tax return, you’d get ten different answers.
The other question is this — have the Feds ever targetted any other executives on this same charges other than those of the Trump Organization? If so, I’d like to see a few examples. If not, why not?
For many years Forbes magazine created a moderately complex business return and sent it out to 50 companies to be prepared.
I do not believe that they ever had two tax returns in agreement, and none ever matched the sample return that they prepared in house.
When you have the tax code written by lawyers and accountants, do not ever expect that the resulting tax laws will lower their billable hours.
Add in any international tax issues and you have a several thousand dollar expense for doing your taxes. For most companies, it really is cheaper to hire staff to manage it, with a small mountain of cash to pay for the audits.
*** 87,000 new IRS agents, and how many new IRS employees to answer the phones? Why, none at all ***