1,500 Taxpayers Take IRS Offer on Shelter
About 1,500 taxpayers who used an improper tax shelter that cost the government more than $6 billion have stepped forward to pay taxes and penalties, the Internal Revenue Service said Thursday.
The taxpayers who took the offer represent about 85% of the known participants in the shelter. Among the 1,500 were 300 people not previously known to have participated.
“We have already begun to contact the taxpayers who didn’t take us up on the offer and expect to begin enforcement action soon,” IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson said.
The tax shelter, a spinoff of an older shelter called Boss, is known as Son of Boss.
Promoters sold the arrangement beginning in the late 1990s to individuals, small-business owners and corporations with large gains, often from selling a business or exercising stock options. The shelter generally produced losses of $10 million to $50 million to offset each taxpayer’s gains. In a few cases, the losses claimed exceeded $500 million.
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