Bloomberg Tax Quotes Professor Ventry on IRS Malta Probe

Professor Dennis J. Ventry, Jr. spoke to Bloomberg Tax for a Dec. 11 story on the Internal Revenue Service rescinding some criminal summonses in its investigation of Malta pension plans.

As Bloomberg correspondent Michael J. Bologna notes in the story, the IRS has raised questions about whether it is “backing off or retooling its aggressive campaign targeting the offshore tax schemes.”

Ventry questioned whether the agency had bowed to critics.

“If the service determined the summonses were improperly served, then it had to rescind them to avoid tainting any subsequent investigation or prosecution,” Ventry told Bloomberg Tax. “But if it bowed to a bunch of criticism from white-shoe law firms that were inexplicably concerned about pensioners and 401k retirees improperly receiving summonses, then something may still be rotten in the state of Malta.”

Professor Ventry is an expert in tax policy and legal ethics. His research interests include tax expenditure analysis, family taxation, professional responsibility and standards of care, tax filing and administration, tax compliance, public finance, and tax and legal history. He is the former chairman of the IRS Advisory Council, and co-author on the casebook, Federal Income Taxation with Martin McMahon Jr., Daniel L. Simmons, and Bradley T. Borden.