Allan Rolnick, CPA
Hank Aaron once said, “It tookme seventeen years to get3,000 hits in baseball. It tookme one afternoon on the golf course.”Remarkably, millions of Americans stillmanage to love it. They’ll pick out theirloudest pants or skirts, head for thecourse, fire up their carts, and whack alittle white ball across a couple hundredacres of manicured lawn for hours at atime. Remarkably, some of them willconsider the whole thing fun. The restwill suffer 18 holes in silent frustrationuntil they hit that one gloriously perfectshot that fools them into thinking may-be, someday, they’ll conquer the game.But golf is more than just fun. It’s bigbusiness. The National Golf Foundationreports the game generates $102 billionin revenue. That includes money spentat over 14,000 courses, plus billionsmore on equipment, apparel, instruc-tion, travel to play the game, and golfcourse homes. There’s even a biparti-san Congressional Gold Caucus madeup of members who believe the worstday out on the course beats the best daybickering in the Capitol. Naturally, allthat money sloshing around the coursemeans big taxes – and people trying toavoid those taxes.This week’s story takes us to Spring-field, Massachusetts, where Kevin Ken-nedy used to manage two municipalgolf courses: the Franconia Golf Courseand Veterans Memorial Golf Course.He earned a base salary of $67,000 peryear. His company, Kennedy Golf Man-agement, also earned a portion of theprofits from greens fees, cart rentals,and pro shop proceeds. Much of thepayments for those items came in theform of cash.Cash is taxable, of course, no mat-ter how you earn it. But it’s also easyto hide, from employers and the IRSalike. So Kennedy simply scooped itout of the register and hid the incomefrom the city. He wound up paying$160,000 of it, in actual currency, to aluxury homebuilder for custom housesin East Longmeadow and on Cape Cod.When it came time to finance the rest ofthe East Longmeadow property, he sub-mitted a bogus contract to the bank thatunderstated the purchase price by the$160,000 he had already paid in cash.(Talk about “improving your lie!”)Naturally, when April 15 rolledaround, Kennedy left that cash off hisIRS scorecard. Maybe he thought hewas playing winter rules?In 2016, IRS agents showed up atKennedy’s shop. They weren’t lookingfor pants with little whales on them.Three years later, prosecutors chargedhim with theft concerning a programreceiving federal funds, money launder-ing, filing false tax returns, and makinga false statement to a financial institu-tion. Just before trial, he plead guiltyto the tax charges. In total, he underre-ported his income by over $1,000,000,costing Uncle Sam over $300,000 intax. Last week, Judge Mark Mastroi-anni sentenced Kennedy to spend 13months learning the difference be-tween a “country club” and a “countryclubprison.” There may be room in theexercise yard to work on his short game.(So he’s got that going for him, whichis nice.) However, you can bet Kennedyis wishing he could take a mulligan ona few of his choices right around now.Gary Player once said, “The more Iwork and practice, the luckier I seemto get.” The same holds true for taxes.We work and practice learninglegit-imatestrategies to help you pay less,that don’t involve filching cash from theregister, lying to your business partners,or defrauding your mortgage company.So call us for a tee time and see howmuch you can save!
Allan J Rolnick is a CPA who has beenin practice for over 30 years in Queens,NY. He welcomes your comments andcan be reached at 718-896-8715 or atallanjrcpa@aol.com.
