Harry Willner, former IRS agent and now convicted tax crook

In mid-April, the US Attorneys Office for Southern New York issued a press release about the indictment, conviction and sentencing of Harry Willmer for tax fraud.  Willmer had been involved in a purported company (with the same address as Willmer's home address) for which he claimed almost $900,000 in operating losses from a bad debt.  He then promoted a scheme to others whereby they would assign their income to his company, he would report the income but offset it with the NOL, and then he would pay the income to them (as a loan payment) minus a "small" fee for his services in saving them taxes.  He even used the scheme himself, having a school district for which he sometimes taught pay his salary to the company and purportedly saving himself about $20,000 in taxes through the fraudulent use of the purported NOL.

Willmer was sentenced to a year in jail, a year of supervised release, a $10,000 fine, and payment of taxes, penalties and interest.  See this short item on US News & World Report.

About the same time  that Willner was sentenced, Actor Wesley Snipes got his sentence of three years for failing to file tax returns (and of course there's taxes, interest and penalties to pay as well).  Will these cases provide guidance to the tax protestor movement, or will they continue to claim they owe nothing?  Hopefully, these glimpses of prison time for tax cheats will at least cause the protestor movement to have second thoughts about brazen violation of the law.