The Grassroots Corner November 11th, 2024

MEET LARRY AMICK

 

        We do not often get a response to our thank-you notes to contributors inviting them to tell us about their interest in FAIRtax. You can imagine our pleasant surprise when we heard from Larry Amick of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

       Larry has an impressive resume. Larry served in 1967 as a decorated tank company commander and battalion operations officer in Germany. He left active Army service in 1989 as a major and took a position as Finance Director, Budget Director, and Director of Administration for the City of Durham, North Carolina.

       Larry founded, co-founded, or took a leading role in a list of businesses longer than your arm. To hit the highlights, one became the largest grants procurement firm in the United States. Another employed over 250 professionals in 11 states, earning INC Magazine’s recognition as the twelfth fastest-growing small company. Two are biometric technology companies. One is a green technology company. Two are in telecommunications. Larry managed the provisioning of telecommunications systems for American and Allied forces during the “Desert Storm” War.

       Larry has served on many boards and commissions and has taught and lectured at Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and other colleges and universities.

       Larry received his Master of Public Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975 and both Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts degrees from High Point University in 1966. He studied economics and business at Duke University Graduate School and graduated from the U.S. Army Officer Advanced Course (Ft. Knox, Kentucky). A widower, he has four children and ten grandchildren. Larry was and will always be an Eagle Scout.

       For all of Larry’s activity, starting businesses and providing hundreds of jobs, no good deeds went unpunished. Here is how Larry tells it.

       In 1982, Larry was an officer in an organization he did not own that was under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He assumed responsibility for unpaid withholding taxes. Larry offered to pay the taxes with interest several times, but the IRS said no. Larry forwent a salary, instead taking quarterly loans as advances on commissions. The loans were documented correctly.

       Unfortunately, the IRS did not consider the advances loans, calling them taxable salary instead. The IRS empaneled a grand jury and argued to the grand jury that Larry and his company labeled these payments as loans to avoid payroll and unpaid withholding taxes.

       The IRS contended that the company had expensed the loans instead of booking them as receivables. This was an odd position to take if the IRS was also arguing the theory that the loans to Larry were salary, which would be a legitimately deductible expense to the company! A fraternity brother, the CFO of the company advancing Larry’s commissions as loans, would not testify to this grand jury to the IRS’s liking. As a result, the grand jury returned a no-bill.

       The IRS threatened the fraternity brother with prison for improperly filing corporate tax returns. Adding a count, the IRS went back to a second grand jury. To avoid prosecution, the fraternity brother was forced to tell the second grand jury that these payments were not loans but salary, for which the company had to withhold payroll tax but didn’t. The fraternity brother was emotionally crushed and attempted suicide, fortunately without effect.

       This time, the indictment came back as a bill. By then, Larry had repaid the commission advances.

       After the trial began, it became evident that the statute of limitations had expired on the payroll tax claims that Larry was being charged with avoiding. That awareness fell through a crack. At a trial in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, the fraternity brother tried to backpedal on his testimony to the grand jury claiming he did not remember, but the trial jury was unconvinced. The trial lasted two weeks, and the IRS won a conviction for evasion of federal taxes and preparing false returns and forms. Larry served four years and three months of a five-year sentence and incurred a $20,000 fine and assessments.

       Now that the court ruled that Larry's payments were salary, Larry retrieved his records to document deductible expenses. The IRS visited Larry in prison and would allow none of the expenses or deductions. With almost no deductions, and with interest and penalties for over a decade, Larry and his wife owed the IRS over 1.5 million dollars. His legal bills were also substantial. Appeal counsel advised Larry that a poor outlook for a successful appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit would not justify the litigation costs. Larry did not think he had been well represented in the U.S. District Court.

       Today, Larry believes he should have agreed to a plea, even though he knew and still knows he was wrongly convicted. He notes that there are over a thousand federal crimes and was told by the two prominent defense attorneys who earlier had worked for the Department of Justice in criminal tax matters that an inside sign over a door in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Prosecution offices read, "Anybody can convict people who are guilty; our job is to convict the others."  Neither Larry nor Grassroots Corner can independently confirm the presence of that sign.

       A series of indignities followed. Friends bought Larry's house in foreclosure and rented it back to his family. During Larry's time in prison, his wife lost the family home and lived with friends. When released, Larry had to get a job to pay for unnecessary lodging in a halfway house. Because of Larry’s skills, he got a job with a Research Triangle Park firm, Metametrics. A probation officer controlled Larry’s travel and virtually every move.

       Despite the indignities, losses, and economic ruin to his wife and family, Larry says he benefited in many ways from his time in prison! The Federal Bureau of Prisons shunted him from one facility to another. Nevertheless, he ate right, exercised, and became trim and fit (down from 239 to 168 – Army fighting weight). He plans to publish a book about the prison diet, which is actually a very healthy approach. He also read the Wall Street Journal and other business and scientific journals daily. His incarceration has greatly influenced his post-prison businesses.

       For those interested in wrongful incarceration, Larry strongly recommends an older book by Roberts & Stratton, The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution.

       It is clear why Larry supports the FAIRtax. If we had had the FAIRtax in 1998, there would have been no indictment. There would have been no payroll tax to allegedly evade and no forms to allegedly falsify. The FAIRtax would also stop much tax gaming, such as three wealthy North Carolina businessmen who bought each others’ mansions and leased them back in a circular arrangement, allowing full deductibility of interest, taxes, insurance, utilities, and depreciation.

       Larry has known about the FAIRtax since 1998 but now has extra motivation to help. We are glad to have someone like him who has finished serving his time and has his skills.

       Larry showed FAIRtax how to apply for a VISA/MasterCard settlement that refunds overpayments to US Customers who used their systems between 2004 and 2019. Larry agreed to donate his commissions to FAIRtax, which he receives from the law firm that handles the matter and processes the refunds.

       I would love to hear if you know someone like Larry who had to endure the IRS's excesses.
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🇺🇸   Call For Pictures & WriteUps - We need more of you to send in pictures and news. If you have something to share, please send your material to me, Jim.Bennett@FAIRtax.org, (908) 578-4975, or fax (908) 598-2888. When others see your activity, they are inspired, and the process snowballs. When the process snowballs, Congress Members, Senators, and even the President start to listen.