According to the Acting Attorney General of New Jersey Mr. John Hoffman, on 16th October 2015, and a Toms River used car dealer was given three years prison sentence for sales tax fraud. This process happened after he failed to file over $156,000 in sales tax to New Jersey State. The man pleaded guilty to the second-degree failure to file tax to on July 2014. The man got indicted in 2013 after an investigation done by both Criminal Justice Division and Division of Taxation Investigations. This inquiry came after routine canvas in which the investigators were searching for dealerships without valid licenses (Joseph, 2015). In the canvas, they realized that the sentenced man’s used car dealership had not remitted sales tax to New Jersey State from the start in 2007. When the Division of Taxation demanded payment, the man filed his sales tax returns. He attempted hiding the total number of vehicles he sold and remitted only $48,593 in the audit. After reviewing the registrations of vehicles, the state discovered that the man should owe $205,157 sales tax he collected. Di Cecilia, who is 58, owns Automation LLC located on Route 9 in the Toms River. He pleaded guilty before the Superior Court Judge Lydon in Trenton to count of failure to turn over the collected sales tax. He deliberately took the step to defraud from his filed returns. On top of the prison sentence, he man was ordered to restitute $220,797 (Karen Wall, 2015).
This matter is a criminal offense and more specifically a white collar crime. Evading to pay tax means one makes the profit while burdening the responsibility to others. The victims of this offense are both the state as well as the ordinary complying taxpayers who get pressed to cater for the evaded tax. The man was directly stealing from the state. The state needs the taxes to improve service to the population. I strongly agree with the intervention put by the law enforcement to handle this problem. Continues perpetration of such practices denies the state its rights. Sentencing as well as forcing him to restitute the whole process can serve as deterrence to potential defrauders in the state. This situation can send a message to those evading tax to foster compliance so that the state cannot get exploited by a few greedy individuals. The state will end up lacking resources to help its population. This crime has very adverse effect on the society in that the state may decide to raise taxes to cater for the evaded taxes. This process can make living expensive for innocent people.
From my personal perspective, this crime is a far-reaching white collar crime. Such crimes usually get committed by individuals who, always under occupations, they exploit social, economic as well as technological abilities for personal as well as corporate gains. People do these crimes are business and money oriented. This crime involves falsifying of reports, deceit, as well as concealment instead of applying violence for an illegitimate gain of money.defendants convicted of such crimes, usually makes false statements to obtain what he wants. Therefore from these white collar crime characteristics this crime suits the group. The man is so smart in that he can sell cars to people and evade taxes. In the investigation, he goes ahead hiding some returns from the scrutiny. Such type of smartness makes similar crimes go unnoticed and end up making business unfair.