Question:

How about an actual case about corporate tax evasion?

Business Tax Evasion Cases

The following are examples of the consequences of committing corporate and business tax evasion from the IRS website.

Small scale. Here is a real-life case about how an employer was sentenced for owing the IRS under $3,000 in employment taxes. The case is taken from the IRS website. This individual was sentenced for failing to pay taxes.

On July 17, 2006 in Kansas City, MO, Dentist Artis Lee Clark was sentenced to 12 months and one day in federal prison for failing to pay employee withholding taxes. Clark pleaded guilty in November 2005 and admitted that he withheld taxes from his employee's wages and failed to send the $2,647 in tax money to the IRS. Larger scale. This is a real-life case where an employer was sentenced for failing to file payroll tax returns and committing employment tax fraud.

On July 13, 2006, in St. Paul, MN, Scott Kimrey Goldsmith, the former owner and president of Goldsmith & Associates, a Minneapolis law firm, was sentenced to 33 months in prison to be followed by 3 years of supervised release. Goldsmith pleaded no contest in 2005 to four counts of failing to file federal individual income tax returns and twelve counts of failing to pay employee withholding taxes that he had collected. Goldsmith did not dispute the federal government's claim that from 1999 through 2002, he paid himself approximately $1,350,000 in salary but never filed tax returns. Moreover, he did not object to the government's allegation that between April 1999 and March 2002, he deducted money from employee paychecks for federal income taxes, social security, and Medicare but failed to turn those funds over to the IRS. Court documents indicate that Goldsmith's actions resulted in tax losses to the IRS and the Minnesota Department of Revenue in excess of $500,000.