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Update: Smile, The TaxMan is Still Watching

February 14th, 2007

Back in March we blogged about lifestyle audits and the TaxMan:

The TaxMan It’s as much a concern as ever. Here’s the high points of that article:

There’s no question we all feel that we pay too much tax. But that’s never stopped our federal and provincial governments from seeking out new ways to prevent you from keeping more of your money in your wallet. Their latest initiative is a carefully targeted stealth campaign that uses lifestyle audits to assess your spending – where you live, how often you travel, what type of car you drive, how many big ticket purchases you make in a year – and then compare it to your declared income to see if it all adds up.

Haven’t filed tax returns for a few years?

DON’T FILE YOUR 2006 RETURN UNTIL WE HAVE CLEANED UP YOUR PAST DUE FILINGS!

Coming forward to the TaxMan NOW, on your own or through an accountant, can expose you to criminal prosecution and penalties!

If they think it doesn’t, you could suddenly find yourself in the middle of an investigation for criminal tax evasion. If you’ve been cheating on your taxes—not reporting all your income, hiding money offshore, or maybe just not bothering to file a return every year — it won’t be long before the TaxMan comes knocking on your door. And while you’re under investigation, the TaxMan can freeze your bank accounts, seize your car, your investments, your property, and otherwise tie up virtually everything you own. If you are convicted of criminal tax evasion, penalties can be as much as 250% of the tax owing. Plus daily interest. A jail term of up to two years is also possible.

Protect your family, your financial security, and your peace of mind with the DioGuardi TaxRx™ lawyer-negotiated tax settlement. Through the confidentiality of lawyer-client privilege, we can put you into a legal safety zone while we negotiate a settlement that will protect you from criminal prosecution and financial penalties. We will also negotiate for a waiver or reduction of tax and interest for some of the years owing. Call DioGuardi Tax Law today at 1-877-TAXRX-02. Or click here to get started online.

In the meantime, keep smiling! Because the taxman is still watching!

Posted in Tax Evasion, The Tax Man |

The Tax Man in Your Website Logs – A Horror Story Part II

February 7th, 2007

If you’ve been scouring your website logs for a bot named “Xenon” since reading our last post, you can stop now. While Google’s spider is easy to recognize by the familiar moniker “Googlebot,” the TaxMan won’t be so easy to spot.

The bot names, or ‘user agents’ for the web savvy, of the spiders used by the tax cartel have not been released. Nor will they. Marten den Uyl of data mining firm Sentient Machine Research says the user agent (bot name) is likely to be variable or configurable on the tax investigator’s part.

For the web savvy, that means you cannot add a modifier to your robots.txt file to keep the tax man out.

Generally, it’s easy to distinguish bot traffic in your server logs by the sheer speed at which a spider (bot) can traverse web pages. When it comes to keepign the TaxMan out, think again, and think covert.

Where a typical search engine bot can hit thousands of pages in a second, Xenon uses a slow search paradigm that mimics human surfing. The TaxMan’s spider could take minutes, hours or even days to digest your website.

The slow search prevents Xenon’s bot from creating excess traffic or drawing attention to itself in the website’s server logs.

Xenon’s spider can even be configured to target specific niches… industries that traditionally have a high incidence of non-filing. While you may not know which industries have a high rate of tax evasion, rest assured that the TaxMan does.

Once the web pages are crawled and documented, Xenon’s Identity Information Extraction Module will interface with national databases that contain information such as names, city names and streets. It will then cross refer all the information it’s gathered with national tax records.

“Of course it’s not illegal,” Par Strom, a noted privacy advocate in the world of Swedish IT, says. “I don’t feel quite comfortable having a tax office sending out those kind of spiders.”

If you’re a little nervous about the idea of TaxMan spidering your website, let us help you clean up your tax records now. Browse our website to learn how the DioGuardi AmnestyRX™ lawyer-negotiated settlement can protect you from criminal prosecution for tax evasion and protect your personal financial records from the TaxMan. Or call us directly at 1-877-TAXRX-02.

Posted in Tax Evasion, Technology, The Tax Man |

Beware New Search Bot in Your Website Logs – It’s the TaxMan

January 31st, 2007

“Websites around the world are getting a new computerized visitor among the Googlebots and Yahoo web spiders: The TaxMan. A five-nation tax enforcement cartel has been quietly cracking down on suspected internet tax cheats, using a sophisticated web crawling program to monitor transactions on auction sites, and track operators of online shops, poker and porn sites.”

Wired News, January 25, 2007

eye_spy500.jpgThe program, named “Xenon” in reference to the auto headlights that light up dark places, started in the Netherlands in 2004 and has been expanded with the assistance of Amsterdam-based data mining firm Sentient Machine Research.

The five nations participating in the tax enforcement cartel are Canada, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK. Sweden is set to join this year.

Colette Gentes-Hawn, of Canada Revenue Agency, (CCRA) has confirmed participation in this online tax crackdown.

“We need more sophisticated tools for the new age of commerce. Now we need a spider,” Gentes-Hawn said in a Toronto Star article on Jan 29, 2007. “There’s no difference between a business on the Internet, a Sears catalogue and a business down the street. They’re all businesses and they all have to pay their taxes.”

The Xenon is basically a spider that crawls websites, determines the website’s probable owner, and then cross-references data from the site with national databases and tax records to help find tax evaders.

If you are earning income from a web-based business and aren’t reporting it on your tax return, it’s only a matter time of time before the TaxMan turns his cyber-eyes on you. Browse our website to learn how the DioGuardi AmnestyRX™ lawyer-negotiated settlement can protect you from criminal prosecution for tax evasion and protect your personal financial records from the TaxMan. Or call us directly at 1-877-TAXRX-02.

Posted in Tax Evasion, Technology, The Tax Man |

$88 Billion Stashed in “Tax Havens” May Be Subject to Taxes

December 17th, 2006

Last year, Statistics Canada revealed that in 2003 Canadians invested $88 billion in off-shore “tax havens”, a figure that’s eight times greater than in 1990. According to Auditor General Fraser, Canadians have avoided hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes through the use of tax havens, located primarily in Barbados, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and Ireland.

The Canadian Government has become increasingly concerned about this loss of tax revenues.

In late November, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced that Ottawa is reviewing the use of tax havens to avoid taxation. Financial experts suggest that the 2007 budget will include amendments to the income tax act to “ensure that income earned by Canadians through foreign jurisdictions, including tax havens, is subject to tax as if it had been earned in Canada.”

Now, the House of Commons is weighing in on the issue. According to an article in The Toronto Globe & Mail; “The federal government [should] eliminate the use of tax havens in an effort to ensure that all corporations, businesses and individuals pay their fair share of taxes,” the House of Commons finance committee said yesterday in a report making suggestions on what should be in the 2007 budget.

Tax lawyer Paul DioGuardi says this legislation has been in limbo since 2001, and if Flaherty includes this amendment in his 2007 budget, it may very well be made retroactive to 2001. That means billions of dollars will be subject to tax collection by the Canada Revenue Agency. It also exposes Canadians with offshore accounts to potential charges of criminal tax evasion and crippling civil penalties if they fail to take steps to report this income on their Canadian tax returns.

Canadians with unreported offshore income can resolve their tax situation without prosecution or penalty by seeking a tax amnesty disclosure.The DioGuardi AmnestyRx lawyer-negotiated tax settlement ensures that the taxpayer’s identity remains confidential until such time as a settlement is presented to the tax authorities and accepted in principle.

If you have income offshore in Barbados, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas or Ireland, contact DioGuardi Tax Law to arrange a telephone consultation before new legislation exposes you to the scrutiny of the TaxMan.

Posted in Tax Evasion, Tax Law, The Tax Man |

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