Episode 27: Criminal Investigations Division at the IRS

Tax update with Ron, Episode 27: Criminal Investigations Division at the IRS

They will show you their badge, and they often carry firearms. The IRS has its own police force because your local police and the FBI and other Federal law enforcement DO NOTE LIKE TO GET INVOLVED with taxes. Your police and the FBI are involved in very serious crime, that is often violent.

In order to have the pleasure of talking to a CID person, you have to be in tremendous trouble. You have to have ignored at least 5 letters from the IRS. You have to have really done something very, very wrong, often over a number of years.

Note, not filing or paying DOES qualify as something very wrong, for large amounts or a long time. Strictly, any non-filing or non-paying is a felony, not a misdemeanor or like a traffic ticket. But even that won’t get you in big trouble as long as you quickly resolve it.

Always consider entering into an IRS Installment payment agreement if you get behind.
So, just like dealing with a Police Officer, be very respectful, and tell them you need to get an attorney involved if it is anything more than a casual matter. …and with these fine folks, almost nothing is a casual matter.

Tax Links:

IRS

About The Show:

Hello and welcome. This is Ron Cohen. I’m a tax partner with the firm of Greenstein, Rogoff, Olsen & Co., LLP and we’re located in beautiful downtown Fremont, California. I appreciate you signing in to listen to my self-indulgent, and sometimes narcissistic comments about the tax system.

No Reliance:
Take no reliance on anything you hear on this podcast. This is mostly for entertainment and education. In order to get an opinion from me or my firm you have to sign an engagement letter and give us all of the facts. After we do some research about your situation we’ll come back and formally give you an opinion. And only then can you use that advice for purposes of entering into any transaction or filing a tax return.

Plagiarism is Okay!
Everything in the tax rules is from the Internal Revenue Code, its regulations, court cases, and various internal memorandums by the Internal Revenue Service. Lots of lawyers and CPAs write very good articles that we will often attach in the show notes. They are trying to show how smart they are to the public so everyone copies from everyone else, and I certainly want to give them credit. We’re not writing any novels, nor creating deep or original thoughts here.

No Politics
We try to stay out of general politics, however tax law is developed through legislation in Congress and anything that’s legislative has its own political ups and downs. And I feel free to comment on that.

How I Help:
Our firm does around 1400 tax returns for various people. The demographics range from little grandmothers all the way up to high tech executives and multinational corporations. We also specialize in family office services for wealthy groups with far flung entities and we also help those groups with things such as bill paying and taking care of their day-to-day financial operations

No Cheerleader for the Tax System:
Our tax system is intrusive, an invasion of privacy and it’s tedious. You need to look at a 12 step flowchart to figure out in some cases whether you can take your mortgage interest deduction. It is part of the technocratic Administrative State that has built up in this country since World War Two, and I don’t like it.

Other countries have simplified the tax system in many ways, despite this we always try to get an A+ (not an A-, or a B, or a C) in our work and make sure it is accurate. Well prepared tax returns rarely get audited, and the best tax audit, is the one that never comes!

Please let us know if there are specific topics you’d like to hear about in future episodes.

Ron Cohen, CPA
Partner at Greenstein, Rogoff, Olsen & Co., LLP
Email: rcohen@groco.com
510.797.8661

We hope you found this podcast “Tax update with Ron, Episode 27: Criminal Investigations Division at the IRS” helpful.  If you have questions or need expert tax or family office advice that’s refreshingly objective (we never sell investments), please contact us or visit our Family office page  or our website at www.GROCO.com.

Ron Cohen, CPA
Partner at Greenstein, Rogoff, Olsen & Co., LLP  CPAs & Advisors
Email: rcohen@groco.com
510.797.8661

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Click here to learn more about Greenstein, Rogoff, Olsen & Co., LLP (GROCO.com)  Advisors to the ultra-affluent.

About GROCO:

Greenstein, Rogoff, Olsen & Co., LLP is a full-service Certified Public Accounting firm located in the Silicon Valley region of the San Francisco Bay Area. It has been consistently ranked as one of the top family office tax, strategy and advisory firms in the San Francisco Bay Area. Founded by Morey Greenstein, the practice has grown into a premier regional family office tax, strategy and advisory firm with offices in the Kansas City and San Francisco Bay Areas.

GROCO® provides strategic family office tax, strategy and advisory,  financial, wealth preservation, business valuation, planning and consulting services to high net worth individuals, closely-held businesses and individuals expecting significant liquidity events. Specific expertise includes delivering these services to Venture Capital partners, individuals, and family offices. Many named partners in the largest VC firms are long-time clients of GROCO.

About Ron Cohen, CPA, MST, Partner GROCO:

Ron has more than 3 decades of experience in public accounting and related industry work. Ron has extensive knowledge in International Tax and has traveled extensively throughout Europe and Asia handling tax issues. He has also served as a tax director for a company with sales in excess of $2 billion. Ron previously taught courses in taxation and financial accounting at a local College.

Prior to his life as a CPA advisors, Ron did some stand-up comedy in Chicago and received advice from several comedians with national T.V. shows. However, after observing that the vast majority of comedians have a very low taxable income, Ron decided to follow his father’s example and become a CPA.  He earned an undergraduate accounting degree from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and then a Masters in Taxation from Golden Gate University.

Ron lives in Fremont with his wife, who teaches high school English, and has two sons and two grandchildren.