Black Inheritance Tax

[Honeykiss1974]

Father, daughter guilty of filing for nonexistent tax credit

By Justin Bergman
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WARSAW, Va., Oct., 23 — A tax preparer was sentenced Thursday to 13 years in prison and his daughter received just over three years for filing a false income tax return claiming nonexistent slavery reparations.

ROBERT L. FOSTER, 51, and Crystal Foster, 25, also were ordered by a federal judge to repay the Internal Revenue Service about half of the $500,000 refund the daughter received in October 2001.

The daughter had spent the money in eight days, buying a $40,000 Mercedes Benz, paying off student loans and helping her brother pay for his first year at Virginia Tech. Prosecutors say only about half the money has been recovered.

Robert Foster prepared his daughter’s tax forms and was convicted with his daughter in July of trying to defraud the government. According to federal prosecutors, Foster prepared returns for several people claiming more than $3.6 million in reparations, most for about $500,000 each.

Crystal Foster collapsed on the floor after she was sentenced, screaming and crying for her children. Her attorney, David Lassiter, had pleaded for leniency, claiming his client was under her father’s control.

STEPPED-UP SCRUTINY
In an interview at the Northern Neck Regional Jail before his sentencing, Robert Foster maintained he did the right thing.
“Black people are not treated as humans, but as things by the U.S. government,” he said. “We were used as resources to enrich this country and we get no inheritance from the wealth we brought.”

On her tax forms, Crystal Foster claimed she had overpaid taxes on long-term capital gains in 2000. She listed the fictitious “Black Capital Investments” fund as the source of the gains.

The IRS says more than 80,000 tax returns were filed in 2001 seeking nonexistent slavery tax credits totaling $2.7 billion. More than $30 million was mistakenly paid out in slave reparations in 2000 and part of 2001 ( **SMH @ the IRS ).


That number dropped significantly last year after stepped-up scrutiny of tax returns and an aggressive media campaign targeting scam artists promising to secure tax credits for blacks.

MAGAZINE SPURS IDEA
IRS spokeswoman Michelle Lamishaw said the idea of filing reparations claims may stem from a 1993 Essence magazine editorial urging blacks to seek refunds of $43,206 per household.

The magazine said the figure was the modern-day equivalent of 40 acres and a mule, which Congress voted to give former slaves following the Civil War. The deal was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson.

Robert Foster said he increased the total tenfold to account for inflation.

The issue of slavery reparations has long simmered in the United States, but some say it may be gaining momentum. Blacks last year sued a number of large corporations in several states, alleging they profited from slavery for two centuries and that blacks should be compensated.

More recently, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said that if elected he would order a study of reparations for descendants of slaves.

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