Final Outcome of FedEx Pilot Vernice Kuglin

You may remember in 2003, the story about Vernice Kuglin beating a criminal rap for tax evasion. She wrote letters to the IRS asking them to show here were in the tax code that it says that individuals are required to pay income tax. Why the IRS didn't just quote section 61(a) defining income, I'll never know, but the bottom line is, the IRS never answered her letters and on this basis this the jury found her not guilty on all counts. United States v. Kuglin, No. 03-20111 (U.S.D.C. W.D. Tenn. 8/8/2003). If she had been convicted, she could have been sentenced to 30 years in prison and fined over a million dollars.

As usual, with stories like this, the mainstream media never follows up on it, even if the results are in favor of the government. It took some digging around to find out that a little more than a year later, she entered into a settlement with the IRS in Tax Court in which she agreed to pay a total of $296,302.00 in tax for the years 1996 through 2001, $221,265.73 in fraudulent failure to file penalties under section 6651(f) for those years, and $14,350.21 in estimated tax penalties under section 6654 for those years, for a total of $531,917.94 plus interest. Kuglin v. Commissioner, No. 21743-03, 2004 TNT 177-14 (T.C. 9/1/2004).

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