Just got released from prison after spending 1 month and fifteen days in pre-trial detention on the grounded suspicions of having committed tax fraud while running a unregistered business with the intent of extracting a large income.
I was a reckless idiot and ended up attracting the eye of the financial inspectorate who started investigating one of my accounts for "unusual activities". Turns out I ranked up over 1K market orders from my "day trading" days while on the dole -- not a big deal in the States, but here law considers this "gambling" when done by a private citizen (commie leftover legalislature), and the only way to avoid getting penalized for it I'd have to register my acitivties as a professional "asset management" business already years ago -- yes, for trading my own stocks I'd have to self-employ myself. By then the financial inspectorate found out that I was not only owing the state several k in tax returns (25% of the profit on each closure) I would also be getting massive fines for failing to register a business activity. My lawyer asked the SA for my charges to be reduced to "tax avoidance", which would spare me prison time, but that didn't work since "tax avoidance" is defined as legally reducing a taxable income, but as I had no registered firm to begin with my activities fall under black market inventory which in legal terms means that the objective element was "tax evasion" - a criminal offense. I'm currently on a road trip to meet with my lawyer, he says that proceedings like this can drag on for over a year! The good news is that he managed to present my case as that of a desperate opportunist falling for a ponzi scheme. Good chances are I'll be found guilty of careless negligence instead of defraudement.
I don't advocate prison time for anyone, but it was a wake up call for me. For the first time in almost ten years I was forced out of my cotton coated comfort zone and found myself in a seedy world of thieves, wifebeaters and overall failures.
I was a reckless idiot and ended up attracting the eye of the financial inspectorate who started investigating one of my accounts for "unusual activities". Turns out I ranked up over 1K market orders from my "day trading" days while on the dole -- not a big deal in the States, but here law considers this "gambling" when done by a private citizen (commie leftover legalislature), and the only way to avoid getting penalized for it I'd have to register my acitivties as a professional "asset management" business already years ago -- yes, for trading my own stocks I'd have to self-employ myself. By then the financial inspectorate found out that I was not only owing the state several k in tax returns (25% of the profit on each closure) I would also be getting massive fines for failing to register a business activity. My lawyer asked the SA for my charges to be reduced to "tax avoidance", which would spare me prison time, but that didn't work since "tax avoidance" is defined as legally reducing a taxable income, but as I had no registered firm to begin with my activities fall under black market inventory which in legal terms means that the objective element was "tax evasion" - a criminal offense. I'm currently on a road trip to meet with my lawyer, he says that proceedings like this can drag on for over a year! The good news is that he managed to present my case as that of a desperate opportunist falling for a ponzi scheme. Good chances are I'll be found guilty of careless negligence instead of defraudement.
I don't advocate prison time for anyone, but it was a wake up call for me. For the first time in almost ten years I was forced out of my cotton coated comfort zone and found myself in a seedy world of thieves, wifebeaters and overall failures.
