Comments Concerning Proposed Amendments to the United States Sentencing Guidelines
March 27, 2001

Introduction | Contents | 20.1 | 20.2 | 12.B | 12.F | 12.G | 12.G.1 | 12.G.2 | 12.G.3

Proposed Amendment 12, Part G: 3 Issues for Comment

Issue 2: Whether to Include Interest and Penalties in Attempted Evasion of Payment Cases.

Evasion of payment prosecutions are rare. The paradigm is the case in which the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") has assessed the tax liability upon completion of what is usually a lengthy process involving notice to the taxpayer and the opportunity to communicate relevant information to the IRS. While generalizations are necessarily limited, our anecdotal experience is that these defendants are often highly committed to resisting their obligations to pay their taxes. As such, they are unintended beneficiaries of the current policy of not including interest or penalties in the tax loss computation.

Not uncommonly, interest and penalties dwarf the tax portion of an assessed liability. In seeking to evade the payment of an already assessed liability, the defendant plainly intends to evade the liability in its entirety. Thus, interest and penalties are fairly encompassed within "the loss that would have resulted had the offense been successfully completed," §2T1.1(c)(1), in evasion of payment cases. We therefore support the inclusion of interest and penalties in the computation of tax loss to be warranted in the limited class of evasion of payment cases.

Introduction | Contents | 20.1 | 20.2 | 12.B | 12.F | 12.G | 12.G.1 | 12.G.2 | 12.G.3