Tax Law Blog | IRS Tax Attorneys

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will provide a first installment of $61.2 million for the Florida Back to Work Initiative, Gov. Charlie Crist said Wednesday.

The $200 million government stimulus program aims to create jobs in Florida by paying for up to 95 percent of the salaries of employees who meet federal low-income guidelines and have a dependent child at home.

The Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation is offering the program in partnership with the Florida Department of Children and Families, Workforce Florida and regional workforce boards.

The funding will allow the workforce boards to finalize agreements with businesses to hire and train employees, according to a news release. Distribution of the remaining funds will follow.

Crist has been hosting ceremonial bill-signing ceremonies today in Tampa, Tallahassee, Orlando, Fort Myers and Miami to promote House Bill 7033. The Florida Legislature passed the bill on the first day of the legislative session, with the governor signing it into law the same day.

The bill changes the taxable wage base, which is used to calculate unemployment taxes, to $7,000 from $8,500 for two years.

The collected funds pay for 26-week state unemployment benefits.

The wage base is slated to increase to $8,500 in 2012 and revert to $7,000 in 2015.

The bill also allows employers to pay 2010 and 2011 unemployment compensation taxes in quarterly installments without interest or penalties, as long as the employers adhere to a schedule.

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A Florida yacht broker who admitted filing a false federal tax return and concealing millions of dollars in a secret account at the Swiss bank UBS was sentenced Friday to two months in prison.

Judge James I. Cohn of Federal District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., gave the broker, Robert Moran, credit for immediately confessing his crime and for assisting a broad federal investigation of tax evasion at UBS and other offshore banks. Judge Cohn also noted that Mr. Moran, a British-born United States citizen, had paid the $1.9 million in penalties and back taxes he owed.

But the judge said “the public is weary” of people trying to hide wealth from the Internal Revenue Service and rejected Mr. Moran’s request for a sentence of probation only.

Mr. Moran is scheduled to report to prison Jan. 4. The United States Bureau of Prisons has not yet determined where he will serve his sentence, but Judge Cohn recommended that he be held in southern Florida.

In April, Mr. Moran became the first UBS client in the United States to plead guilty after the bank gave federal prosecutors about 150 names of Americans suspected of tax evasion. The bank later reached a second agreement that calls for disclosure of 4,450 additional United States taxpayers to the I.R.S.

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The disgraced financier Bernie Madoff has received a $13,800 tax rebate, angering clients who lost billions in the biggest Ponzi scheme in Wall Street history.

The jailed fraudster was sent the money after overpaying the property taxes on his waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, which his wife still owns despite other assets being seized by investigators who unravelled his $65bn investment scam.

The rebate cheque was issued last month and made payable to Ruth and Bernard Madoff. Ruth Madoff sent the cheque back to the tax office asking that it be reissued with her husband’s name removed.

The couple’s lawyer refused to explain why Mrs Madoff requested the cheque be reissued in her name alone, but any joint assets the couple had were seized to help compensate his thousands of victims, who ranged from Hollywood film stars to retired public service employees.

Under Florida tax law a person’s primary home is protected from court judgements, and Mrs Madoff is listed as the mansion’s sole owner in Palm Beach County records. But tax experts say that, by law, rebate cheques can only be issued in the names of those who made the initial payment, so Mrs Madoff’s request to have it reissued is likely to be refused.

For the past two years many local governments have been faced with a financial situation unprecedented in recent decades. The total value of taxable property within their jurisdictions, which yields property taxes that comprise a significant part of their operating revenue, has decreased rather than increased.

The significance comes in setting Florida tax rates.

In the past, one of the options local officials faced was to keep the current tax rate, which would allow a boost in revenue because property values were rising, or to adopt the “rollback rate,” a lower tax rate that would yield the same amount of property tax revenue as the previous year.

With falling tax roll values, however, some local governments are resorting to increasing tax rates just to stay even and to accomplish what the “rollback rate” was intended to accomplish when Florida property values were increasing.

Changes in Florida’s property tax laws that have occurred in recent years have made the situation even more confusing.

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