Ah, so the 2008 Tax Terrorism season comes to an end… they were a couple weeks late this time on their timing.
It is sad, but let’s clear the air. Wesley Snipes was not convicted of tax evasion or fraud. He was convicted of “willful failure to file”. The undisputed evidence showed that he had a tax liability, meaning that there was information returns reported to the IRS, under penalty of perjury, that showed he had taxable income of more than $3100 (or whatever the exemption amount was for each of the years in question). When someone has a tax liability they are required to pay and file. Wesley Snipes needed to properly dispute the claims made against him if they were incorrect.
Furthermore, I bet he did have taxable income. He had millions of dollars. If he had a money market bank account with let’s say $100,000 in it, he may have made a few thousand a year in interest from that bank account. Most banks today are federally chartered corporations. For example, Wells Fargo (a common bank around here) is a “National Association”. Investing in a federally chartered corporation is a privileged activity for you given by the federal government and therefore makes one liable to pay federal taxes on any profit or gain received from such activity.