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Showing posts with label Cummings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cummings. Show all posts

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Pay Payroll Taxes Or Go Out Of Business?



We have talked before about the “big boy” penalty. It is one of the harshest penalties in the tax Code.
This is a payroll related penalty. It is not because you were late with a payment or failed to send in a return on time. No sir, it kicks in when you do not send the government any money at all.
And I am reading about two guys who decided to play big boy. One of them surprised me.
The company itself was based in Rhode Island and provided wireless internet in public spaces. Think Facebook at the airport, for example.
Business tanked. Cash was tight. Vendors did not get paid, including the IRS.
The company needed help. They hired Richard Schiffmann as president in October, 2004. In October, 2005 he brought in Stephen Cummings (who had worked there previously as a consultant) to be chief financial officer.
Cummings quickly found out they had problems with back taxes.
The Board granted check-signing authority to the pair: Schiffmann up to $100,000 and Cummings up to $75,000.
The two tried; they really did. But there was nothing there. The Board fired the two in June, 2006.
You know that the IRS eventually knocked on the door. They were angry and they wanted scalps. They went after Schiffmann and Cummings for the big boy penalty.
In the literature, this is known as the trust fund recovery or responsible person penalty. It addresses the income and FICA taxes withheld from employees. Mind you, the IRS wants the employer FICA also, but it is emphasizing the employee withholding. The IRS takes the position that this was never the employer’s money, whose function was solely to transfer the money as agent for the employees to the IRS.
The penalty is 100%.
It is intended to be Defcon 1.
The IRS went after Schiffmann for $394,334 and against Cummings for $254,280.

Think about this. You got hired. You were there for nine months. I doubt you got paid anywhere near $254,280. This is the lousiest job ever.
The two fought back, although there were some procedural misses we will not discuss but which leave me scratching my head. The two for example raised the following arguments:

(1) Schiffmann argued that he did not learn of the liability until late 2005. The most he could be liable for is two or three quarters, which would not add-up to $394 thousand.

He had a point. The penalty technically goes quarter-by-quarter.

But only in a classroom or in a textbook. In the real world, the IRS will argue that – if you could write a check – then you could have written checks for both current and past payroll taxes. Those past taxes become your problem.

And Schiffmann could write checks up to $100,000. Cummings could write up to $75,000.

Gentlemen, let me introduce problem. Problem, let me introduce gentlemen.

(2) They argued that all monies were encumbered and spoken for. They remitted what they could.

This is the “I had to pay … or the business would have folded” argument.

The IRS will respect encumbrances, but there better be a legal obligation. A pinky swear is not enough. 
The IRS will not respect a responsible person prioritizing them down, when the IRS had as much right to what money may exist as anyone else.

Schiffmann and Cummings could not meet that test.

(3) The Board would not let them pay certain bills.

More specifically, the Board would not let them pay taxes.

Now we have something. The IRS looked into this. It decided that there were two directors who raised a fuss, but it also decided that those two could be outvoted by the remaining directors.

And the directors never formally voted on a resolution, so the IRS could presuppose that the two would have been outvoted.

Then the IRS made an interesting observation: EVEN IF the Board has prohibited the two from paying the taxes, the most that would have happened is that the Board would have joined them in also being subject to the penalty. It would not have gotten Schiffmann and Cummings off the hook.

The two were held responsible.

Cummings was the one who surprised me.

He used to be an IRS field auditor.