Government Concedes in Polish Lottery Case

March 13, 2023 by 2 Comments
0 Flares Filament.io 0 Flares ×

A few months ago in Polish Lottery Winner’s Son Sues Over Penalties For Failing To Report Foreign Gifts I discussed Wrzesinski v US. For those of you who may not remember, the matter involved penalties under Section 6039F for failing to file Form 3520, the Annual Return To Report Transactions With Foreign Trusts and Receipt of Certain Foreign Gifts.

As I discussed, Krzysztof Wrzesinski emigrated to the US from Poland in 2005 at the age of 19. About five years later his mom, who still lived in Poland, won the Polish lottery. She took the proceeds and made gifts to Krzysztof of $830,000 over the course of 2010 and 2011.

Krzysztof’s tax return preparer told him that he need not file any forms with his tax returns and that the gift proceeds were exempt from gross income. 

While the proceeds were excluded from gross income, Krzysztof was hit with penalties in the amount of $87,500.00 and $120,000.00 for 2010 and 2011. Appeals abated much of those, but not about $45,000.

Turns out that last week DOJ has filed a status report indicating that it has conceded, and that Krzysztof will be receiving a refund in a couple of months.

Hat tip to Dan Price, who, in a post on Linked In, reasonably suggests that he hopes the concession will lead “IRS to acknowledge reasonable cause in more foreign gift penalty cases”.

Filed Under: Abatement, Civil Penalties
Avatar photo About Leslie Book

Professor Book is a Professor of Law at the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law.

Comments

  1. Joseph R Viola says
    March 13, 2023 at 2:29 pm

    As Chris Wrzesinski’s tax attorney, I question why Dan Price is entitled to a “hat tip” while my name was omitted from any of your posts. Joe Viola, JD, LLM, Philadelphia.

    Reply

Comment Policy: While we all have years of experience as practitioners and attorneys, and while Keith and Les have taught for many years, we think our work is better when we generate input from others. That is one of the reasons we solicit guest posts (and also because of the time it takes to write what we think are high quality posts). Involvement from others makes our site better. That is why we have kept our site open to comments.

If you want to make a public comment, you must identify yourself (using your first and last name) and register by including your email. If you do not, we will remove your comment. In a comment, if you disagree with or intend to criticize someone (such as the poster, another commenter, a party or counsel in a case), you must do so in a respectful manner. We reserve the right to delete comments. If your comment is obnoxious, mean-spirited or violates our sense of decency we will remove the comment. While you have the right to say what you want, you do not have the right to say what you want on our blog.

Speak Your Mind

*