Laura Zwicker, Private Client Services Group chair, shared her insights with Bloomberg Tax regarding claims of whether constitutional protections against excessive fines extend to civil tax penalties, specifically in the case of a failure to report foreign bank accounts.

Excerpts: 

“It’s a completely different attack than what we’ve seen before,” said Zwicker.

Zwicker added that Gorsuch’s comments suggested that he could find a number of civil tax penalties to be violations of the Eighth Amendment, which could shake up how enforcement is handled. “It would substantially change the way that things leading up to tax fraud are dealt with by the IRS,” said Zwicker.

Resources

• Bloomberg Tax