It is crucial that we recognize, at such a time as this – when the unemployment rate is high, income is either low or nonexistent – that we do not fall for the age-old tax scheme “reparations tax credit.”
This is a scheme that is emphasized by taxpayers, tax promoters and some return preparers who encourage the African-American community to take the fraudulent position that, due to our racial classification, we can take deductions that will produce a large refund that the black community would otherwise not receive.
This is how false tax promoters present this scheme to the black community.
Fraud promoters market a tax package, kit or other materials that claim to show the black community how they can receive large refunds based on this claim, or how taxpayers can avoid paying income taxes based on this and other arguments that lack merit.
Wesley Snipes tried it. It did not work but he tried it, again and again and again. Beginning in 1999 to 2004, Wesley Snipes had a flamboyant explanation: he presented that he was not actually required to pay taxes.
Snipes maintained that Americans are not obligated to pay income taxes and that the government extracts taxes from its citizens illegally. True, he did not state this based on his heritage but it is the SAME theory.
Frankly, I think his advisors, return preparers and accountants should be sitting side by side WITH him in jail. How, may I ask, do you think that you are exempt from taxes having earned $38 million and the common laborer, after earning $400, must report his or her income? Find yourself another thought or deduction or credit.
Snipes is a victim of current history.
Let’s go back in history to Paul Cuffee, an African American who resided in the state of Massachusetts and resisted the state tax. Cuffee confronted the state Legislature thusly, speaking of African Americans: “While we are not allowed the privilege of free men of the state having no vote or influence in the election with those that tax us. Yet many of our color, as is well known, have cheerfully entered the field of battle in defense of the common cause.”
In 1783 free taxpaying African Americans in Massachusetts were given full citizenship rights, including the right to vote.
Should you argue that African Americans should receive reparations for 400 years of degradation, hardship, rape, murder and yet unfathomed consequences, I will agree.
I agree, as an African American and an experienced, trained tax professional for 30-plus years, that we deserve payment for this menacing, overwhelming scar that yet affects us.
While employed by the IRS, I discovered techniques, credits, deductions that our community was not aware of. I also witnessed penalties, which drove small business out of existence, seizures or the confiscating of assets which would change an individual’s life for years.
But it was and is legal.
If we really want to change the law regarding reparations, we have to take the position of our forefather, Paul Cuffee, and change the law at the polls. We will have to vote our way out.
Do not take the position of our brother Wesley Snipes and attempt to change the law AS we file our tax returns. It’s not happening.
Further and foremost, the IRS has time on its side. They let you get by for a few years, and then they will take action. Don’t let the silence make you repetitively fraudulent. Don’t let the large refund fool you. If the tax return claims credits or deductions that are fraudulent, they will get the refund money back with interest and penalty.
Alma M Scarborough owns and operates Scarborough’s Tax Affair (314-621-1402, www.taxhitlady.com, taxhitlady@sbcglobal.net).
