By: dmc-admin//July 2, 2001//
“[T]here is plenty of … circumstantial evidence of the defendant’s
intent to avoid tax. As in Guidry, the defendant was an accountant,
moreover an experienced one; he personally prepared the fraudulent tax
return; the sums taken were large (they amounted to 75 percent of his
total income during the period of the embezzlement), and (the weakest
bit of evidence) he used the money for ordinary expenses, the sort of
thing people usually defray from taxable income. Furthermore, the fact
that illegal income is taxable is widely known, even among lay people.
Everyone knows that Al Capone, for example, was nailed for income-tax
evasion, not for the bootlegging, loan-sharking, extortion, and
prostitution that generated the income. Accountants know better than
anyone except tax lawyers that illegal income is taxable. “[T]he jury
had to choose between two hypotheses. One was that the defendant knew
that embezzled income is taxable. The other was that he thought
embezzled income tax-free – a token of the government’s affection for
embezzlers and other thieves. The former hypothesis was, in the
circumstances, far more likely than the latter. That is enough to compel
affirmance.”
Affirmed.
Appeal from
the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois,
Holderman, J., Posner, J.