IRS Seizes Life Savings for Deposits Under $10,000 - Money Confiscated Even Though No Crime Committed

WND

An Iowa woman who did not cheat on her taxes or launder money has had her entire life savings confiscated by the Internal Revenue Service simply because she deposited less than $10,000 at a time into the bank.

“How can this happen?” restaurant owner Carole Hinders told the New York Times. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”

Hinders has been serving up Mexican dishes at her eatery in Arnolds Park, Iowa, for close to 40 years, all the while depositing her earnings in a small nearby bank.

But last year, two tax agents showed up to inform her they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000, as the IRS interpreted her small deposits as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.

The paper explains: “Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent. Many give up.”

“They’re going after people who are really not criminals,” David Smith, a former federal prosecutor who is now a forfeiture expert and lawyer in Virginia told the Times. “They’re middle-class citizens who have never had any trouble with the law.”

Read more at WND:

http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/irs-seizes-life-savings-for-deposits-under-10000/