IRS wraps up 2022 ‘Dirty Dozen’ scams list; agency urges taxpayers to watch out for tax avoidance strategies
**UPDATED**
Cryptocurrency, non-filing, abusive syndicated conservation easement, abusive micro-captive deals make list
IR-2022-125, June 10, 2022
WASHINGTON – The Internal Revenue Service today wrapped up its annual “Dirty Dozen” scams list for the 2022 filing season, with a warning to taxpayers to avoid being misled into using bogus tax avoidance strategies.
The IRS warned taxpayers to watch out for promoters peddling these schemes. As part of its mission, the IRS is focused on high-income taxpayers who engage in various types of tax violations, ranging from the most basic, failing to file returns up to sophisticated transactions involving abusive syndicated conservation easement deals and abusive domestic micro-captive insurance arrangements.
“These tax avoidance strategies are promoted to unsuspecting folks with too-good-to-be-true promises of reducing taxes or avoiding taxes altogether,” said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig. “Taxpayers should not kid themselves into believing they can hide income from the IRS. The agency continues to focus on these deals, and people who engage in them face steep civil penalties or criminal charges.”
The IRS publishes the Dirty Dozen as part of a broad ranging effort to inform taxpayers. People should be careful not to get conned into using well-worn abusive arrangements with high fees as well as the other Dirty Dozen schemes.
The IRS has stepped up efforts on abusive schemes in recent years. As part of this wider effort, the IRS Office of Chief Counsel announced earlier this year it would hire up to 200 additional attorneys to help the agency combat abusive syndicated conservation easements and micro-captive transactions as well as other abusive schemes. (IR-2022-17).
Last week, the IRS kicked off the 2022 Dirty Dozen list (IR-2022-113) with four heavily promoted abusive deals that taxpayers need to avoid. The IRS followed this up with a number of common scams that can target average taxpayers. These consumer-focused scams can prey on any individual or organization, steal sensitive financial information or money, and in some cases leave the taxpayer to clean up the legal mess.
For today’s conclusion of the Dirty Dozen, the IRS highlights four other schemes that typically target high-net-worth individuals who are looking for ways to avoid paying taxes. Solicitations for investment in these schemes are generally more targeted than solicitations for widespread scams, such as email scams, that can hit anyone.
Hiding assets in what the taxpayer hopes is an anonymous account or simply not filing a return in the hopes of staying off the grid are tax avoidance scams that have been around for decades. The IRS remains committed to stopping these methods of cheating that short-change taxpayers who reliably pay their fair share of taxes every year.
The IRS warns anyone thinking about using one of these schemes – or similar ones – that the agency continues to improve work in these areas thanks to new and evolving data analytic tools and enhanced document matching. These Dirty Dozen schemes cover:
Concealing Assets in Offshore Accounts and Improper Reporting of Digital Assets:
The IRS remains focused on stopping tax avoidance by those who hide assets in offshore accounts and in accounts holding cryptocurrency or other digital assets.
International tax compliance is a top priority of the IRS. New patterns and trends emerging in complex international tax avoidance schemes and cross-border transactions have heightened concerns regarding the lack of tax compliance by individuals and entities with an international footprint. As international tax and money laundering crimes have increased, the IRS continues to protect the integrity of the U.S. tax system by helping American taxpayers to understand and meet their tax responsibilities and by enforcing the law with integrity and fairness, worldwide.
Over the years, numerous individuals have been identified as evading U.S. taxes by attempting to hide income in offshore banks, brokerage accounts or nominee entities. They then access the funds using debit cards, credit cards, wire transfers or other arrangements. Some individuals have used foreign trusts, employee-leasing schemes, private annuities and structured transactions attempting to conceal the true owner of accounts or insurance plans.
U.S. persons are taxed on worldwide income. The mere fact that money is placed in an offshore account does not put it out of reach of the U.S. tax system. U.S. persons are required, under penalty of perjury, to report income from offshore funds and other foreign holdings. The IRS uses a variety of sources to identify promoters who encourage others to hide their assets overseas.
Digital assets are being adopted by mainstream financial organizations along with many other parts of the economy. The proliferation of digital assets across the world in the last decade or so has created tax administration challenges regarding digital assets, in part because there is an incorrect perception that digital asset accounts are undetectable by tax authorities. Unscrupulous promoters continue to perpetuate this myth and make assertions that taxpayers can easily conceal their digital asset holdings.
The IRS urges taxpayers to not be misled into believing this storyline about digital assets and possibly exposing themselves to civil fraud penalties and criminal charges that could result from failure to report transactions involving digital assets.
“The IRS is able to identify and track otherwise anonymous transactions of international accounts as well as digital assets during the enforcement of our nation’s tax laws,” Rettig said. “We urge everyone to come into compliance with their filing and reporting responsibilities and avoid compromising themselves in schemes that will ultimately go badly for them.”
High-income individuals who don’t file tax returns: The IRS continues to focus on people who choose to ignore the law and not file a tax return, especially those individuals earning more than $100,000 a year.
Taxpayers who exercise their best efforts to file their tax returns and pay their taxes, or enter into agreements to pay their taxes, deserve to know that the IRS is pursuing others who have failed to satisfy their filing and payment obligations. The good news is most people file on time and pay their fair share of tax.
Those who choose not to file a return even when they have a legal filing requirement, and especially those earning more than $100,000 per year who don’t file, represent a compliance problem that continues to be a top priority of the IRS.
Here’s a key reminder for taxpayers who may be wrongly persuaded that not filing their return is a smart move. The Failure to File Penalty is initially much higher than the Failure to Pay Penalty. It is more advantageous to file an accurate return on time and set up a payment plan if needed than to not file. The Failure to File Penalty is generally 5% of the unpaid taxes for each month or part of a month that a tax return is late. The penalty generally will not exceed 25% of unpaid taxes. The Failure to Pay Penalty is generally 0.5% of the unpaid taxes for each month or part of a month the tax remains unpaid. The penalty will not exceed 25% of unpaid taxes.
If a person’s failure to file is deemed fraudulent, the penalty generally increases from 5 percent per month to 15 percent for each month or part of a month the return is late, with the maximum penalty generally increasing from 25 percent to 75 percent.
Abusive Syndicated Conservation Easements: In syndicated conservation easements, promoters take a provision of the tax law allowing for conservation easements and twist it by using inflated appraisals of undeveloped land (or, for a few specialized ones, the facades of historic buildings), and by using partnership arrangements devoid of a legitimate business purpose. These abusive arrangements do nothing more than game the tax system with grossly inflated tax deductions and generate high fees for promoters.
The IRS urges taxpayers to avoid becoming ensnared in these deals sold by unscrupulous promoters. If something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. People can risk severe monetary penalties for engaging in questionable deals such as abusive syndicated conservation easements.
In the last five years, the IRS has examined many hundreds of syndicated conservation easement deals where tens of billions of dollars of deductions were improperly claimed. It is an agency-wide effort using a significant number of resources and thousands of staff hours. The IRS examines 100 percent of these deals and plans to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Hundreds of these deals have gone to court and hundreds more will likely end up in court in the future.
“We are devoting a lot of resources to combating abusive conservation easements because it is important for fairness in tax administration,” Commissioner Rettig stated. “It is not fair that wage-earners pay their fair share year after year but high-net-worth individuals can, under the guise of a real estate investment, avoid millions of dollars in tax through overvalued conservation easement contributions.”
Abusive Micro-Captive Insurance Arrangements: In abusive “micro-captive” structures, promoters, accountants, or wealth planners persuade owners of closely held entities to participate in schemes that lack many of the attributes of insurance.
For example, coverages may “insure” implausible risks, fail to match genuine business needs or duplicate the taxpayer’s commercial coverages. The “premiums” paid under these arrangements are often excessive and are used to skirt the tax law.
Recently, the IRS has stepped up enforcement against a variation using potentially abusive offshore captive insurance companies. Abusive micro-captive transactions continue to be a high-priority area of focus.
The IRS has conducted thousands of participant examination and promoter investigations, assessed hundreds of millions of dollars in additional taxes and penalties owed, and launched a successful settlement initiative. Additional information regarding the settlement initiative can be found at IR-2020-26. The IRS’s activities have been sustained by the Independent Office of Appeals, and the IRS has won all micro-captive Tax Court and appellate court cases, decided on their merits, since 2017.
IRS warns taxpayers of ‘Dirty Dozen’ tax scams for 2022
WASHINGTON – The Internal Revenue Service today began its “Dirty Dozen” list for 2022, which includes potentially abusive arrangements that taxpayers should avoid.
The potentially abusive arrangements in this series focus on four transactions that are wrongfully promoted and will likely attract additional agency compliance efforts in the future. Those four abusive transactions involve charitable remainder annuity trusts, Maltese individual retirement arrangements, foreign captive insurance, and monetized installment sales.
“Taxpayers should stop and think twice before including these questionable arrangements on their tax returns,” said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig. “Taxpayers are legally responsible for what’s on their return, not a promoter making promises and charging high fees. Taxpayers can help stop these arrangements by relying on reputable tax professionals they know they can trust.”
The four potentially abusive transactions on the list are the first four entries in this year’s Dirty Dozen series. In coming days, the IRS will focus on eight additional scams, with some focused on the average taxpayer and others focused on more complex arrangements that promoters market to higher-income individuals.
“A key job of the IRS is to identify emerging threats to compliance and inform the public so taxpayers are not victimized, and tax practitioners can provide their clients the best advice possible,” Rettig said.
“The IRS views the four transactions listed here as potentially abusive, and they are very much on our enforcement radar screen.”
The IRS reminds taxpayers to watch out for and avoid advertised schemes, many of which are now promoted online, that promise tax savings that are too good to be true and will likely cause taxpayers to legally compromise themselves.
Taxpayers, tax professionals and financial institutions must be especially vigilant and watch out for all sorts of scams from simple emails and calls to highly questionable but enticing online advertisements.
The first four on the “Dirty Dozen” list are described in more details as follows:
Use of Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust (CRAT) to Eliminate Taxable Gain. In this transaction, appreciated property is transferred to a CRAT. Taxpayers improperly claim the transfer of the appreciated assets to the CRAT in and of itself gives those assets a step-up in basis to fair market value as if they had been sold to the trust. The CRAT then sells the property but does not recognize gain due to the claimed step-up in basis. The CRAT then uses the proceeds to purchase a single premium immediate annuity (SPIA). The beneficiary reports, as income, only a small portion of the annuity received from the SPIA. Through a misapplication of the law relating to CRATs, the beneficiary treats the remaining payment as an excluded portion representing a return of investment for which no tax is due. Taxpayers seek to achieve this inaccurate result by misapplying the rules under sections 72 and 664.
Maltese (or Other Foreign) Pension Arrangements Misusing Treaty. In these transactions, U.S. citizens or U.S. residents attempt to avoid U.S. tax by making contributions to certain foreign individual retirement arrangements in Malta (or possibly other foreign countries). In these transactions, the individual typically lacks a local connection, and local law allows contributions in a form other than cash or does not limit the amount of contributions by reference to income earned from employment or self-employment activities. By improperly asserting the foreign arrangement is a “pension fund” for U.S. tax treaty purposes, the U.S. taxpayer misconstrues the relevant treaty to improperly claim an exemption from U.S. income tax on earnings in, and distributions from, the foreign arrangement.
Puerto Rican and Other Foreign Captive Insurance. In these transactions, U.S owners of closely held entities participate in a purported insurance arrangement with a Puerto Rican or other foreign corporation with cell arrangements or segregated asset plans in which the U.S. owner has a financial interest. The U.S. based individual or entity claims deductions for the cost of “insurance coverage” provided by a fronting carrier, which reinsures the “coverage” with the foreign corporation. The characteristics of the purported insurance arrangements typically will include one or more of the following: implausible risks covered, non-arm’s-length pricing, and lack of business purpose for entering into the arrangement.
Monetized Installment Sales. These transactions involve the inappropriate use of the installment sale rules under section 453 by a seller who, in the year of a sale of property, effectively receives the sales proceeds through purported loans. In a typical transaction, the seller enters into a contract to sell appreciated property to a buyer for cash and then purports to sell the same property to an intermediary in return for an installment note. The intermediary then purports to sell the property to the buyer and receives the cash purchase price. Through a series of related steps, the seller receives an amount equivalent to the sales price, less various transactional fees, in the form of a purported loan that is nonrecourse and unsecured.
Taxpayers who have engaged in any of these transactions or who are contemplating engaging in them should carefully review the underlying legal requirements and consult independent, competent advisors before claiming any purported tax benefits. Taxpayers who have already claimed the purported tax benefits of one of these four transactions on a tax return should consider taking corrective steps, such as filing an amended return and seeking independent advice. Where appropriate, the IRS will challenge the purported tax benefits from the transactions on this list, and the IRS may assert accuracy-related penalties ranging from 20% to 40%, or a civil fraud penalty of 75% of any underpayment of tax.
While this list is not an exclusive list of transactions the IRS is scrutinizing, it represents some of the more common trends and transactions that may peak during filing season as returns are prepared and filed. Taxpayers and practitioners should always be wary of participating in transactions that seem “too good to be true.”
The IRS remains committed to having a strong, visible, robust tax enforcement presence to support voluntary compliance. To combat the evolving variety of these potentially abusive transactions, the IRS created the Office of Promoter Investigations (OPI) to coordinate service-wide enforcement activities and focus on participants and the promoters of abusive tax avoidance transactions. The IRS has a variety of means to find potentially abusive transactions, including examinations, promoter investigations, whistleblower claims, data analytics and reviewing marketing materials.
