One of Board candidate Bob Frank’s less-than-endearing “qualities” is that when he’s not telling outright lies, he is delivering half-truths in such a manner that he assumes the WHOLE TRUTH will not be discovered.
And when called on it, putting him in a position where he could move past the lie by simply admitting an error, his response is to shoot the messenger.
Let’s take a look at the question of whether Mr. and Mrs. Frank would be entitled to a whistleblower award from the IRS if Sun City Anthem is ultimately found liable for the more than $1.3 million in taxes assessed by the Internal Revenue Service on the Association’s 2007 federal tax return.
During the gobbledygook Frank spewed while attacking me during Member Comment Period at the February 23 Board meeting, he said he would not be entitled to a whistleblower award because the amount the IRS would recover is less than $2 million.
If it all stopped there, Mr. Frank would be correct and we could all move forward blissfully, in the knowledge that the Franks would not prosper from their act in “turning in” SCA to the IRS.
Here, in part, is what the IRS “Whistleblower-Informant” regulation says on the subject:
The IRS Whistleblower Office pays money to people who blow the whistle on persons who fail to pay the tax that they owe. If the IRS uses information provided by the whistleblower, it can award the whistleblower up to 30 percent of the additional tax, penalty and other amounts it collects.
If the taxes, penalties, interest and other amounts in dispute exceed $2 million, and a few other qualifications are met, the IRS will pay 15 percent to 30 percent of the amount collected.
The complete text from which I’ve quoted above will be found in Internal Revenue Code Section 7623(b), which I have linked to below.
Now here is what Mr. Frank is NOT telling us, and again I quote from the Code:
The IRS also has an award program for other whistleblowers - generally those who do not meet the dollar thresholds of $2 million in dispute or cases involving individual taxpayers with gross income of less that $200,000. The awards through this program are less, with a maximum award of 15 percent up to $10 million. In addition, the awards are discretionary and the informant cannot dispute the outcome of the claim in Tax Court. The rules for these cases are found at Internal Revenue Code IRC Section 7623(a) - Informant Claims Program, and some of the rules are different from those that apply to cases involving more than $2 million.
So you see, readers, while the Franks’ claim to a whistleblower award may be discretionary based on an IRS determination, Section 7623(a) of the Internal Revenue Code will allow them to claim an award if the case ends with Sun City Anthem having to make a payment to the IRS.
As this blog has reported, a number of people, on a specific date, heard Mrs. Frank state, at a public meeting, that they expect to receive a whistleblower award.
This places Mr. Frank in a clear conflict-of-interest situation should he be elected to the Board. He owes it to the community to publicly declare this prospective conflict of interest and to state publicly whether he would claim the whistleblower award and keep it for himself if it comes to that.
It is not illegal for him to do this, but his fellow residents are entitled to know his intentions. The standard Bob Frank reply that “it is none of your business” is not appropriate, because it IS our business.
Link to IRC 7623(b).
Link to IRC 7623(a)
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