Hunter Biden did violate tax laws. He did not violate tax laws that would have gotten others thrown in prison. Even though violation of those laws theoretically has prison as a possible punishment, that punishment is almost never actually put in place.
Nope. I honestly didn’t know as a fact but I assumed that multiple tax fraud = prison time for most people.
Thanks
One might consider the recent case of Roger Stone…
Usually, the IRS settles for paying back the taxes owed, plus some fines that are proportional to the amount of taxes owed. They just want the money.
Of course, the IRS isn’t actually the Justice Department, but that’s still usually the way it works out.
And, you admitting that you did commit tax fraud and that you won’t do it again. If you are a tax portestor, claiming that Income tax is illegal, then simply paying up wont do. You have to admit that stance was wrong.
I don’t claim to be an expert in comparative law.
But I also doubt it matters. Whether Hunter was extradited would IMHO depend less on the law and more on raw power, of which the United States has a lot.
One idea would be for him to go wherever Donald Trump is the most unpopular. Polling back in 2020 said it was Mexico, and given Trump’s repeated invasion threats since then, I’m confident Mexicans wouldn’t mind seeing Trump stymied.
Downside is that if Mexico loses the Second Mexican-American War, Hunter is in trouble.
To be fair, at that point, we’ll all be in trouble.
According to the site below. that’s not true. 68.7% of tax fraud convictions involve jail time, with the median time being 16 months, which is already a reduction from the guideline minimums.
Sentencing is affected by prior behaviour. Is this a one-off thing, or has it happened before? Hunter evaded taxes in 2016 through 2019. Sentencing also depends on prior criminal behavior, and Hunter also has a felony gun charge and has a documented history of illegal drug use. The large majority of people caught with tax evasion have no prior criminal history.
In addition, sentences are increased in the following cases:
Not sure about obstruction of justice, but Hunter ticks all the other boxes. And the money involved is much greater than the average case, which is $339,000. Hunter evaded at least 1.4 million in tax over four years, and the amount matters to sentencing.
As a reminder, Hunter has been charged with three felonies and six misdemeanors. The idea that this would not lead to jail time for anyone else is a DNC talking point they pretty much invented and I’m seeing it repeated uncritically everywhere.
He’s been charged with failing to pay tax, filing a false tax return, and evasion of assessment. It wasn’t a one-off mistake, he did it four times in a row. And he lived a lavish lifestyle during that time, so he can’t ask for leniency becxause of financial hardship. That should not translate into a non-jail outcome.
The kind of person who doesn’t get a jail sentence would be someone who just didn’t report some income and claim they forgot or missed an entry or fat-fingered it or something like that,. then paid up when caught. Someone caught with a side hustle earning them a few thousand extra per year that they don’t report might be a good example. But when inspectors find a complex series of bank accounts designd to hide thesource of money, and someone has received millions of dollars that way and failed to report it, it’s gonna be jail time.
If Hunter doesn’t go to jail THAT will be the special treatment. Not the other way around.
If that’s true, then off to the slammer he should go.
Well, my cite was the U.S. Sentencing Commission. I’ll take that as authoritative.
And you have been informed several times that most people who are convicted for what Hunter Biden has been accused of do not go to jail, so why do you continue to assume this?
Joe??
Thanks-Is corrected.
I just informed the thread that this is not true. The majority of people charged with tax evasion DO get prison time, and they get it for far less than what Hunter has done.
Specifically, 68.7% of tax evasion cases result in jail time with a median duration of 16 months. The median size of the tax fraud is $339,000, and over 85% of people charged have no criminal history. Yet 2/3’s of them go to jail. Hunter Biden has a criminal history, evaded almost 5 times the average in taxes, and set up complex financial transactions to enable it. All those speak to higher than average sentencing.
Hunter is facing three different felonies, only one of which is the tax evasion charge. The other two carry their own penalties. And there’s the six misdemeanors.
Didn’t mean to imply the cite was dodgy. I have no reason to.
Got it. My comment was mostly for the people who won’t read the cite and assume it’s some right wing glurge.
It’s not a right-wing glurge. But it is showing what the result is after the plea bargain. It thus understates the amount of fraud for any given punishment level.
Going into guessland, my guess is that there frequently are special circumstances making a fraud scenario at least a little bit different from most others. I wonder if it is analogous to the the Anna Karenina principle (each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way). If so, there could always be genuine uncertainty as to whether Hunter was treated fairly.
On the other hand he is white and wealthy enough to have excellent legal representation which are factors that would bring down the sentence for someone in his situation.
Perhaps I’m missing it, but I see no one saying in the recent posts that the charges and the possible jail time need to take into account the fact that Biden did pay all his back taxes (including penalties, I believe) in 2020.
I also haven’t seen a good cite for what percentage of cases went to prosecution and resulting in jail time for people who paid their back taxes. One would think this would be rare. What incentive does this give tax frauds to pay anything if they are going to jail anyway?
If I’m wrong and prosecuting and jailing people who owe the government zero dollars is a common occurrence, I apologize. That wrongness, however, would give me even more incentive to see cites on numbers for these circumstances and not on tax frauds as a whole.
The cite I gave is for tax fraud, not tax evasion. They are very similar, but I’m not sure which one Hunter was charged with. I will try to find the equivalent info for tax evasion.