Al Thompson, the businessman who became a hero to tax protesters when he stopped withholding taxes from the pay of workers at his small manufacturing plant more than four years ago, was convicted on Friday on all but one of 14 tax charges.
The conviction is the latest blow to the "tax honesty movement," a melange of groups that assert various theories that Americans are tricked into paying taxes.
Thompson, 58, of Redding, California, was convicted of filing a false tax return, making false claims against the government and willful failure to withhold and pay taxes.
The jury acquitted Thompson of conspiring with Joseph Banister, a former Internal Revenue Service criminal investigator, to defeat the tax laws. Banister, a certified public accountant in San Jose, California, who tells clients no law requires them to pay taxes, asked to be tried separately in June.
Thompson's actions were the focus of an article in The New York Times in November 2000. Because he had publicly declared his actions, Thompson told the jurors, he did not see how they could convict him of conspiracy.
Thompson's company, Cencal Aviation Products, which made flight bags and other accessories for pilots, is defunct.
He has been in custody since November. He was jailed three times before that for violating civil orders to cooperate with state auditors and file federal tax returns.
The government calculated the tax loss resulting from Thompson's actions was US$256,000.
Thompson, who acted as his own lawyer, argued that he had not willfully violated the law and contended that he had been charged with a crime because "the IRS was misapplying the law."
In another tax protester case, a federal jury in Boise, Idaho, on Friday convicted David Roland Hinkson of soliciting the killings of a federal judge, a federal prosecutor and an IRS agent because of earlier charges against him for willful failure to file tax returns.
Hinkson, who ran Water Oz, a company that sold dietary supplements through a Web site, was accused of offering US$10,000 for each killing.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
RSS