Taxpayers who employ workers have obligations under federal law to withhold and remit federal employment taxes to the IRS. In addition to this withholding and payment requirement, federal law also imposes certain reporting obligations, such as filing IRS Form 941 and 940. Taxpayers who fail to comply with either of these requirements can face significant civil penalties for their non-compliance.1 Indeed, another unique weapon commonly used by the government in these instances is the imposition of the trust fund recovery penalty, which permits the government to bypass the employer entity entirely to go after any responsible persons who made the decision not to pay the employment taxes.2
But can the failure to satisfy employment tax obligations also arise to a criminal violation of the law? The answer, of course, is yes. In fact, multiple federal criminal statutes throughout the Internal Revenue Code (the "Code") protect the government's interest in ensuring that employment tax obligations (both payment and filing) are met.3 And in recent times, the government has focused a lot of its efforts on imposing criminal sanctions against employers who fail to timely pay employment taxes and/or file employment tax returns. This article discusses those efforts. It also provides an option to many taxpayers to regain compliance with the federal employment tax laws and at the same time mitigate their criminal exposure.
INDIANAPOLIS — Marion County Clerk Kate Sweeney Bell announced that county election officials are pushing back against viral social media posts falsely claiming that ballots marked by poll workers...