Taxable Talk

Last year, I wrote about James Andrew Yeager. Mr. Yeager operated a strip club in Columbia, Missouri. Strip clubs are a cash business, and Mr. Yeager decided that he needn't report all the cash as income. He pleaded guilty last year to tax evasion.

Last week, he found out his sentence: 21 months at ClubFed, and restitution of $140,543 plus paying additional back taxes of $36,732.

The strip club, Club Vogue, is still in operation. The news story from last year said he owned the club; this year's story makes that unclear. If Mr. Yeager is the owner, the US government may soon own a strip club (seizing the assets to pay the back taxes).

So if you are a strip club owner, may I recommend—as I have before—that you pay your taxes. Cash income is taxable....

If you are wondering about the headline, so am I. But it's a quote out of the trial of one Frederick Kriemelmeyer, a dentist in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Dr. Kriemelmeyer is accused of four counts of tax evasion.

As the LaCrosse Tribune reported, Dr. Kriemelmeyer is a believer in David Wynn Miller. Miller does not use standard English; instead, he used a dialect he invented called "In the Truth." It's got a lot of capital letters, prepositional phrases, and not much in the way of punctuation. You can see samples by going to Mr. Miller's website.

In any case, Dr. Kriemelmeyer challenged the indictment because it was in English—our English. That didn't work (the judge let the indictment stand). The dentist challenged the US flag in the courtroom. No, I'm not joking about that. He didn't win that argument.

David Wynn Miller believes that if you add extra punctuation to a tax return, you will somehow not have to pay taxes. At least, that's what I think he espouses. Dr. Kriemelmeyer is a follower of Mr. Miller, and is conducting his own defense.

The government plans on having 15 of Dr. Kriemelmeyer's patients testify as to how much they paid him. The government alleges that if there was an asterisk by a patient's fees in Dr. Kriemelmeyer's ledger, the actual payment was much higher. For example, $20* meant that the patient paid $100. If the government proves that, they've proved the case. The total tax evasion is alleged to be about $364,000.

The trial will likely last another few days.

I'm heading to Florida tomorrow, so posting will be light to non-existent until the weekend. Until then, here's yet another story of someone who got into tax trouble from a strip club. And, yes, the name of the individual did grab my attention.

Matthew Fox (no relation) was a bouncer at an Atlantic City, New Jersey strip club beginning in 1998. Later he was the manager of the club. Last week a jury convicted him of five counts of tax evasion for not reporting the approximately $400,000 he earned from the club (and evading about $110,000 in taxes according to this story). Mr. Fox and his wife were acquitted on a count of criminal conspiracy.

The indictment alleged that Mr. Fox was paid in cash for his work, but didn't report the cash as income on his tax returns. Whether you are paid in cash, checks, or casino chips is irrelevant—in general, all wage income is taxable.

So if you do end up working at a strip club, do yourself a favor and report your income. It's a lot easier and cheaper to pay the taxes now then it is to find yourself in court on trial for tax evasion.