Is It Possible to Just Pay My Taxes and Make the Criminal Investigation Division Go Away?

No, when a case reaches the level where IRS Criminal Investigation is involved, paying the taxes is beyond the point because what they're doing is they're looking at your conduct and even payment of the tax doesn't eliminate your past conduct. So it's a nice thing to do but at the same point it's not going to make your criminal charges go away completely. Now the good news is that payment of tax can mitigate the tax loss so it can let some of the air out of the tires with what they're charging you with because look at it from a practical perspective. The US attorney is saying we're going to charge you with these crimes and you know you did all this stuff and in front of the government and bla bla bla bla bla. Well if you pay the tax and the interest and the penalties, then there's really not a whole lot of harm. I mean there's still harm but it's a lot less of an appetizing case for a prosecutor if they can't stand in front of the judge and argue a tax loss. So the answer is no, it doesn't make it go away but yes, it can help if used strategically within an investigation. What I recommend is don't just pay the taxes immediately. Wait, develop a strategy and offer that as a carrot, potentially in the future, to help mitigate your criminal exposure. It's better to play your cards at the right time than to hurry up and just do things without any sort of strategy in place so sit down with a criminal tax attorney, build a plan and then execute upon that plan over the course of the investigation.

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Sam Brotman, JD, LLM, MBA

Owner and Director of Legal
Brotman Law

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