From the “eeeewwwww” tax file

June 13, 2009

Here's another, and somewhat disturbing, take on the proverbial death and taxes connection.

Toe_tagA former mortuary worker convicted of carving up and selling cadavers donated to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) medical school has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $1.7 million in fines, restitution and unpaid taxes..

Last month, a Los Angeles jury found Ernest Nelson guilty of of one count each of conspiracy to commit grand theft from the UCLA Willed Body Program, grand theft, grand theft by false pretenses and — here's the tax part — failure to file an income tax return for 2003 and four counts of filing a false tax return involving the 1999 through 2002 tax years.

As Paul Caron in the TaxProf Blog notes, it always comes down to taxes.

In Tax Update Blog, Joe Kristan suspects that Mary Shelley's horror classic "would have been a different story if the peasants that came after the Monster and Dr. Frankenstein and his faithful body-snatcher, Igor, were IRS agents."

And Peter Pappas in The Tax Lawyer's Blog takes a more modern Young Frankenstein view of the icky body parts selling scheme.

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The ol’ blog is here to help you finish up your extended Form 1040. You can start with January’s tax tips page, which has links to the rest of the year’s tips by-month collections. You also can peruse various tax categories for more tailored advice by clicking on the More Tax Posts drop-down menu at the top of this (and every) page.

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