In cases charging either tax evasion or filing false returns, the government will naturally offer the defendant’s tax returns for the years charged in the indictment as part of its case-in chief, and the defendant will be hard-pressed to object to their admissibility. This, however, is not the only way the government uses the defendant’s tax returns in criminal cases. Prosecutors in both tax and non-tax cases occasionally offer the defendant’s returns to prove some other aspect of the charges. Thus, in tax cases the government may argue that returns for years not specifically at issue are relevant to the defendant’s state of mind. And prosecutors in fraud and narcotics cases may offer returns that the defendant filed (or failed to file) either as circumstantial evidence of the charged conduct or to rebut some defense argument.
This article addresses the government’s ability to access the defendant’s returns for use in non-tax cases, as well as the evidentiary issues surrounding the admissibility of both “other year returns” in tax cases and any returns in non-tax cases.
