[aMorePerfectUnion]

"Mueller is alleging that payments to offshore companies - they may or may not be just accounts, but regardless, they are companies under the laws of the countries they are in - are somehow reportable as personal income. Now that’s hard to prove"

To oversimplify this. For Americans, all offshore company entities are structured as:

1. "disregarded" - meaning it flows onto your own tax return as if it isn't a separate entity
2. a real company - operating business that has substance. Not a fake/shell operation.

In this case, it appears Manafort did not report these companies either way, but then wired money from these companies into the US.

[Regulator]

“it appears”

Yes. Indictments - hearsay evidence assembled to foment an arrest - can look any way the shyster, er, lawyuh, wants to make it look.

But why go to the trouble of setting up such corporations if you aren’t going to use them to cover you?

This little case - and it is little - will turn on that. Crap like this goes on every day, and the glitterati push the envelope on it as you know.

Just big noise being made because, after all, that’s the only reason for wasting time on it. As another poster pointed out, Mueller looked at it back in 2012 and said no dice.