- NEWS RELEASE -

Date: January 10, 2006

Subject: Prosecutor targets tax evaders

Platte County tax evaders paid nearly $200,000 in back taxes, interest, and penalties in 2005. The Platte County Prosecutor’s Office nearly doubled the amount of delinquent taxes collected versus 2004.

Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd said, “You pay your taxes, and these people should too. When people fail to pay income taxes, the rest of us have to make up the difference.”

Zahnd’s office collected $190,000 in delinquent Missouri income taxes in 2005, an increase of $85,000 from 2004. In 2004, Zahnd’s office collected $105,000, which was three times the amount collected in each of the previous three years.

Missouri law allows county prosecutors to file civil lawsuits to collect unpaid Missouri income taxes. Zahnd said his office files such lawsuits only after people receive demands to pay from the Missouri Department of Revenue and his office. Zahnd’s office allows people to make arrangements to pay taxes before any lawsuit is filed.

Zahnd said, “These people are given several opportunities to do the right thing. We take action only after they continually fail to do what the law requires.”

Some of the cases Zahnd’s office filed allege that the defendants failed to file Missouri income tax forms to report their income; other cases allege that the defendants filed tax forms but failed to pay all taxes owed.

Zahnd said his office has aggressively targeted tax cheats for the past two years. “No one likes paying taxes, but all of us have to pay our fair share. I am not willing to let our schoolchildren suffer or roads deteriorate simply because some people think they don’t have to shoulder their tax burden like the rest of us.”

Assistant Prosecutor Amy Ashelford and Zahnd’s office administrator, Chris Poepping, serve as the office’s delinquent tax collection team. “Ms. Ashelford and Ms. Poepping work very hard to see that anyone in Platte County who does not pay their taxes at the outset winds up paying interest and penalties on top of what was originally owed.”