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http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01s1784p86n| Title: | Seize first, question later: The IRS and civil forfeiture |
| Contributors: | Carpenter, Dick M., II Salzman, Larry |
| Keywords: | Forfeiture—United States Discrimination in criminal justice administration—United States Tax penalties—United States |
| Issue Date: | Feb-2015 |
| Publisher: | Institute for Justice |
| Place of Publication: | Arlington, Va. |
| Description: | Federal civil forfeiture laws give the Internal Revenue Service the power to clean out bank accounts without charging their owners with any crime. Making matters worse, the IRS considers a series of cash deposits or withdrawals below $10,000 enough evidence of “structuring” to take the money, without any other evidence of wrongdoing. Structuring—depositing or withdrawing smaller amounts to evade a federal law that requires banks to report transactions larger than $10,000 to the federal government—is illegal, but more importantly, structured funds are also subject to civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture is the government’s power to take property suspected of involvement in a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, no one needs to be convicted of—or even a charged with—a crime for the government to take the property. Lax civil forfeiture standards enable the IRS to “seize first and ask questions later,” taking money without serious investigation and forcing owners into a long and difficult legal battle to try to stop the forfeiture. Any money forfeited is then used to fund further law enforcement efforts, giving agencies like the IRS an incentive to seize. The surest way to prevent innocent people from losing money unjustly would be to end civil forfeiture and replace it with criminal forfeiture. Short of that, removing the financial incentive to seize, raising the standard of proof to forfeit and enacting other procedural reforms would help protect people from losing their bank accounts when the government has little or no proof of criminal wrongdoing. |
| URI: | http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01s1784p86n |
| Related resource: | https://ij.org/report/seize-first-question-later/#:~:text=The%20IRS%20practice%20of%20%E2%80%9Cseize,too%20easy%20for%20law%20enforcement. |
| Appears in Collections: | Monographic reports and papers (Publicly Accessible) |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| seize-first-question-later.pdf | 3.42 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Download |
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