IRS Says To Claim Any Illegal Activity, Stolen Goods Or Property

Are you ready for the new year? Hopefully, 2022 will be better than the past two years. One can only hope.

And with the new year, comes the time to think about filing your 2021 tax returns. Fortunately for my wife and me, we get a bit back from the state and federal governments. Not a lot, but enough to pay for a season of camping, so that works out nicely.

We always go to a tax preparer to put our returns together since I have a side job and I don't understand half of what needs to be filled out on those tax returns. I took a look at the IRS tax instruction manual, and it's thick as a book. Who reads all that stuff?

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Well, there are a lot of things about taxes that I wasn't aware of, and one I recently found out about from various news sites including USA Today, CNN, and NBC News, is about claiming stolen goods or property, bribery, kickbacks, and illegal activity.

Yes, according to the United States Internal Revenue Service, you must claim any stolen goods or property on your taxes provided that you did not return said items or property, and you must claim any illegal activity like receiving money for selling illegal drugs.

Silly as it might seem, it's all spelled out in the Internal Revenue Service’s Publication 17. I took a look at that section and it's quite a large read, to say the least. Now my question is, who in their right mind would claim stolen property, goods, or claim to have received money from illegal activities?

Well, according to CNN Business, actually any person who has been caught for any of these illegal activities or fears they may be caught during that tax year, might want to claim the activity, otherwise, they may get hit with tax fraud as well.

via USA Today, NBC News, CNN, U.S. Internal Revenue Service

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