Cheating on your taxes is not only illegal, it can ruin your life. Just ask one of these five tax evaders.
Is it okay to cheat on your taxes? Even just a little bit? According to a recent poll conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications, a whopping 87 percent of respondents believe that it is never okay to cheat on your taxes, even “just a little bit.” It’s hard to reconcile the survey results with the hundreds of billions of dollars the IRS claims it loses every year due to tax fraud, unless, of course, you realize if a stranger called your home and asked you if you thought it was okay to cheat on your taxes, the common sense response is to say “no.”
In reality, a number of business owners and entrepreneurs do cheat on their taxes (a practice formally known as “tax evasion”) and get caught; and the consequences can truly ruin your life personally and professionally. Just ask these five people, who didn’t heed the warnings, and paid a high price for their mistakes.
Walter Anderson
Anderson started out as a salesman for MCI Communications in 1979 and became a telecom entrepreneur, taking advantage of the opportunities that arose from industry deregulation. He used a significant portion of his wealth to become the first modern “space-preneur,” bankrolling a number of projects including the attempted rescue of the Russian Mir space station. All this came to a halt when Anderson was arrested for tax evasion in 2005 and subsequently convicted of hiding over $365 million in income to avoid taxes using shell companies, fake identities and offshore entities. In 1998 he earned more than $126 million but reported only $67,939 in income, paying $495 in income taxes. He served several years in prison and was released in December.
