Tax Evasion

     One issue that will have to be dealt with is the statute of limitations. For example, Trump declared a loss of $916,000,000.00 in 1995. Is that actionable in a criminal prosecution? Perhaps not because of the statute of limitations. 

     The general rule is that the IRS will not audit a tax return after three years. However, they can go up to six years if the fraud is significant. That would still do us no good, as the effective statute of limitations would have expired in 2001. 

     Yet, there is hope.

     Is there any chance that that 1995 loss amount was not inflated to allow Trump to take continuing deductions over the years thereafter? That would be a continuing crime. In 2005, he supposedly made $150,000,000.00 but likely paid nothing in taxes … because of the earlier crime. Thus, if Trump was still deducting in 2012 for losses in 1995--and I suspect he was--then he can be prosecuted for the tax fraud that occurred originally in 1995. 

     On a related note, the New York Attorney General has referred potential charges to the IRS regarding taxation of the money misused by the Trump Foundation charity. 

     Finally, even if there are no crimes a prosecutor can bring related to Tax Evasion or Tax Fraud, the IRS can still institute a civil recovery of evaded taxes.