Paul Manafort was using fraudulently obtained loans and tax-cheating tricks to prop up his personal finances as he became chairman of the Trump campaign in 2016, according to a new 32-count indictment filed against him and his business partner Thursday.
The indictment ratchets up pressure on Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, who were already preparing for a trial
.. Mueller accused the men of lying on their income-tax returns and conspiring to commit bank fraud to get loans.
.. these are two fellows on a multiyear tear of lying to every bank they could find about their income. To a federal prosecutor, it’s fairly crude. It’s extensive and bold and greedy with a capital ‘G,’ but it’s not all that sophisticated.”
.. there was one hero in the special counsel’s tale — a bookkeeper who refused an alleged request by Gates to falsely inflate a revenue claim
.. they could be facing de facto life prison sentences.
.. from 2006 to 2015, Manafort, with help from Gates, avoided paying taxes on income from Ukraine by disguising it as loans from offshore corporate entities
.. using foreign bank accounts to make payments to businesses in the United States on Manafort’s behalf.
.. unidentified co-conspirator wrote that a document looked doctored and asked them to “do a clean excel doc” and send that instead.
.. When Manafort joined the Trump campaign as an adviser in early 2016, he agreed to work with no pay
.. prosecutors alleged Manafort was taking out multimillion-dollar loans in those same months, including $5.5 million that he sought in the same month he joined the campaign.
.. Manafort was under significant financial pressure even as he ascended to the top of the Trump campaign in mid-2016.
.. One bank lender “questioned Manafort about a $300,000 delinquency on his American Express card, which was more than 90 days past due. The delinquency significantly affected Manafort’s credit rating score.”
.. On Oct. 25, 2017 — just days before the first indictment was revealed — Gates submitted a false tax document for the 2013 tax year
.. Three of his lawyers had asked to leave the case
.. Thomas C. Green
.. Green is an experienced white-collar attorney with a reputation for cutting plea deals on behalf of his clients.
Phillipines Tax Comissioner goes after Famous over Tax Avoidance
Millions of tax cheats never get caught. And the IRS seems powerless to stop them.
This isn’t just a problem in the U.S. American taxpayers are Dudley Do-Rights compared to people in some other countries. On today’s show, we head to some of the cheating-est places on earth to bring you tales from some of the roughest, toughest tax collectors around. These guys have tricks, tax collector mind-games, that they play to get people to do the right thing.
Bureau of Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares poses with her score following target practice in a firing range at suburban Mandaluyong city
In the Phillipines, they made the Tax Commissioner famous.
Britain: You are currently in the very small minority that have not paid us yet.
Why the I.R.S. Fears Bitcoin
Many, including the Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen and the billionaire investor Warren Buffett, have warned about a “Bitcoin bust” that could rival the dot-com crash of 2000 and wipe out speculators.
.. But the bigger concern about cryptocurrencies may be the damage they could do, in the long run, to government finances through lost tax revenue.
.. The Internal Revenue Service estimates that it loses around $500 billion annually because of unreported wages alone. And the underground economy in the United States — estimated at 8.4 percent of output — is relatively small compared with those of other countries.
.. The I.R.S. understands this, which is why it has been pushing to break the anonymity of cryptocurrencies. In November, it persuaded a federal judge to order Coinbase, a popular Bitcoin exchange, to reveal the identity of the customers for more than 14,000 accounts (representing nearly nine million transactions).
.. The I.R.S. can observe all the transactions between A, B and C on the Bitcoin blockchain, but it cannot disprove that B and C are “arm’s length” counterparties (that is, independent and not colluding). Rules in the United States that require financial institutions to verify the identity of address holders do not solve the problem, because as far as the I.R.S. knows, B and C could have been set up by a foreign institution that does not comply with such rules.
It is inconceivable that the government would simply accept enormous revenue losses from a larger underground economy and from tax dodges on trading profits. The only question is how heavy-handed the response would be.
.. More likely, the United States would take a tougher approach and attempt to ban cryptocurrencies.
.. While cryptocurrencies open opportunities for tax evasion and illegal operations,
- they also offer drastic reductions in the cost of financial transactions, especially for the poor, and
- less reliance on banks, which can increase the power of the Federal Reserve to control money supply and reduce the risk of bank runs.
.. A smarter response would be for the government to switch from taxing income when it is received to taxing income when it is spent. Many economists support moving to this kind of consumption tax, but it would require a major overhaul of the tax code.
.. For cryptocurrencies to survive long enough to be an effective means of performing everyday transactions, the cryptocurrency community will need to find a way to prevent tax evasion. This will involve a tricky balancing act, preserving anonymity while providing the I.R.S. with sufficient information to prevent tax evasion.
More generally, cracking down on tax evasion will require that the community learn to trust government. Since this goes against the very ethos of the cryptocurrency movement, it poses the most difficult — but no less necessary — challenge.
Why Are Mutual Fund Fees So High? This Billionaire Knows
Mr. Baron’s mutual funds charge some of the higher investment fees around, and the fees have held steady despite a $1 trillion exodus out of old-school mutual funds into cheaper, better performing rivals that track a variety of indexes and investment styles.
In a global economy where competition and Amazonian price destruction have forced companies to cater to cost-wary customers, the mutual fund industry is a rare outlier. Fees on most actively managed mutual funds, which house the retirement savings and other assets of millions of Americans, have barely budged.
The reasons for that — quiescent mutual fund boards, complacent investors and a general unwillingness to call a halt to one of the great gravy trains in financial history — are all visible inside Mr. Baron’s fund family.
.. An old-fashioned stock picker, Mr. Baron achieved renown in the 1990s and the 2000s for successfully betting on small companies.
.. Mr. Baron, 74, is perhaps best known for his annual investment conference, now held at the Metropolitan Opera House at New York’s Lincoln Center and in its 26th year. Mixing rock stars, pop entertainment (Barbra Streisand and Paul McCartney have performed in the past), patriotism (this year celebrated the 100th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s birth) and triumphant chief executives, the gala is a giddy ode to American capitalism
.. Mr. Baron is unapologetic about the high fees. He argues that his skills and experience — and the arduous task of researching small growth companies — justify the fees.
.. “Since inception, 98 percent of our funds have beaten their benchmark,” he said in an interview. “If you want the lowest fee, you should not invest with us.”
.. But if you want to bet on American growth stocks, “you can double your money in 10 years,” he said. He frequently sticks with his top picks for decades.
.. Mr. Baron believes that the true measure of his success is performance since his fund’s launch in 1994.
.. Industry experts say there are several reasons that active mutual fund fees have not succumbed to broader pricing trends in the economy.
.. The first is their power. While more than $1 trillion has left higher-fee funds in favor of passive competitors, that still leaves some $10 trillion. That generates about $100 billion in fees for fund companies. And it suggests they don’t need to cut fees to retain assets.
.. With funds’ multiple share classes, varying structures and oceans of boilerplate, even sophisticated investors may not realize they are paying up for a laggard.
.. allege that trustees are not pushing hard enough for lower fees.
.. At the Baron fund family, the fee oversight is complicated by the fact that Mr. Baron, the largest shareholder in the investment company and the manager of its largest fund, has a financial incentive to keep fees high.
.. “Compensation based on fees is worrisome,”
.. “Kicking and scratching is unlikely to lower fees but certainly will antagonize the manager, which is the one institution that can arrange for the trustees’ dismissal. Besides, trustees will tell themselves, if a fund’s fees really are too high, the market will sort things out and investors simply won’t invest in the fund.”
.. In 1982, after a stint as a Wall Street analyst, he founded his investment firm.
His timing was perfect. It was the start of a bull market, and he developed an expertise in picking small companies that would grow into big ones such as Charles Schwab, Vail Management Company and Tesla.
.. It was the heyday of the individual stock picker. Peter Lynch at Fidelity and Bill Miller at Legg Mason gained cultlike followings
.. his annual investor gala, which he pays for himself, that defines him. Onstage, he cultivates a grandfatherly mien, bragging about how much money the chief executives of his portfolio companies made for Baron shareholders. His chief maxim is “We invest in people,” and he treats management as family.
.. he offered to connect her with his longtime tax lawyer. “It’s incredible what he has done,” Mr. Baron said