Daily Archives: January 13, 2006

More on the KPMG Tax Shelter Case

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Yet more examples of the spaghetti that is our tax law:

  • Lynnley Browning:

    Former KPMG tax professionals who are facing criminal charges over questionable tax shelters challenged the government yesterday to prove that they had broken the law.

    The defendants filed more than two dozen motions in United States District Court in Manhattan yesterday, asking among other things that charges be dropped because no court had ever ruled the shelters in question illegal.

  • David Reilly and Paul Davies:

    One defense filing, submitted to the U.S. District Court in New York, accused prosecutors of “distorting” the facts and “obfuscating the truth-finding process” in order to win the case. By threatening KPMG with criminal indictment, the motion said, the government forced the firm to accept a “draconian” deferred prosecution agreement in which it admitted the tax strategies were fraudulent and agreed to waive attorney-client privilege.

    “The goal is obviously not justice, nor truth, but instead the unsavory desire to tack another skin to the wall,” the filing said.

Data Mining Run Amok

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John Robb:

Google is likely central to the Internet portion of this effort. There’s no doubt in my mind that Google has a fat contract with the Homeland Security Department. They can track your search behavior using cookies. Affiliates using cookies on adwords. Analyze the content of your weblog for dangerous phrases. Anonymity doesn’t help. They have your IP address and therefore can get the records they need to put a name and a credit history next to your Internet behavior (all without a warrant).

A USDA Yin to that Yang.