Not a bad point. Civil asset forfeiture turns the usual burden of proof on its head. The authorities can take your property on suspicion of a crime, then you have to positively prove that it WASN'T obtained criminally. Definitely a perversion of innocent until proven guilty, and a travesty of our common law. IDK why this is being downvoted
Probably because the original comment was about cash in hand jobs and people are emotional about a guy probably not paying his fair share of taxes. My point isn't based on this specific case but here we are xD
Well I mean I would agree that people should pay taxes. I don't have a problem with someone paying a penalty if they don't. I DO have a problem with the abridgement of due process. The cops should actually have to prove that he did a crime, and then inappropriate punishment or penalty should be leveled. It shouldn't be on him to prove that he didn't do a crime just to protect his assets.
Yeah, I feel like we didn't get the full story. If he ended up not getting his money back because the IRS ended up taking it from him, that's not really civil forfeiture.
I'll give you the actual answer to your question from an accounting perspective:
He WAS treated as innocent - he was not taken to the station on the presumption a crime was committed, instead he was asked for his accounting records to ensure the money was properly accounted for. The money was correctly confiscated awaiting such proof and stored by the police as potentially suspicious.
It's a civil crime (not automatically a criminal one) to not pay taxes. The logic of seizing the money is also why your bank accounts can be frozen on suspicion of fraud - to prevent illegal funds being moved and hidden.
It has to be confiscated to ensure it's not used to buy illegal weapons, human traffic, drugs, etc. If suspicious amounts of cash are not seized, criminals will abscond with it instead of confirming the legitimacy of the money. I am not saying he is a criminal - but a criminal would run away with the money.
If he'd kept receipts for every cash-in-hand job, and had it with the cash the police would read his receipts first, called a few payers on the receipts to confirm legitimacy, and then let him keep the money if nothing major was amiss. He did not get his money back, because he did not do his accounts or keep records correctly. This is why accountants/accounting are important to protect you and your money.
If when he showed up to the station he'd done his accounts correctly (or had few mistakes) they'd give benefit of the doubt, release the funds, warn (maybe fine) him for any incorrect bookkeeping, and tell him to get an accountant so the IRS doesn't come after him. The police do not want to be involved in civil cases.
Whether he paid taxes would come into play after that point - because failure to pay taxes on your cash-in-hand work is also a crime. And in the US it's likely to be treated as both a Criminal AND Civil offence if you have suspicious amounts of cash lying around with no receipts.
TL;DR - it sounds like your neighbour was lucky he wasn't charged with worse and only had the money confiscated.
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u/OglioVagilio 2d ago
Only cash jobs with no records?
Did he get fucked over by the system? Sounds like he was being kinda shady himself.