Posted on 12/23/2004 7:23:43 AM PST by Rakkasan1
A small-town accountant in northern Minnesota is locked in a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over whether taxpayers are owed hundreds of millions of dollars in capital-gains tax refunds.
Charles Ulrich believes the IRS was wrong when it told certain insurance policyholders how much federal tax to pay on stock they received from mutual insurance companies that went public — a process called demutualization.
He hasn't been shy about letting the IRS — or anyone else, for that matter — know that he wants those taxes refunded to consumers.
So far, the IRS hasn't budged.
It's estimated that 15 million Americans received roughly $100 billion in payouts as more than a dozen mutually owned insurance companies — such as John Hancock, Metropolitan Life and Prudential — converted to publicly traded companies in the past five years. Mutual insurers are owned by their policyholder members.
Ulrich is a certified public accountant in Baxter, which is near Brainerd, about 140 miles northwest of St. Paul. He has devoted nearly four years to researching and arguing his cause. He works out of an office in his house, often until midnight or 1 a.m.
"This is the kind of thing that in the history of our country we had the Boston Tea Party over," Ulrich, 68, said.
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
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