Nick Fountain

As much as they want to draw a clear line between legit loopholes and illegitimate tax shelters...

Sometimes people fight back.

Especially people with a lot at stake.

Right.

So that's where this story goes next.

The tax lawyers and wealth managers and peddlers of these Maltese retirement accounts started to organize.

Now, in these tapes you're hearing, nobody's saying anything illegal.

They're not a gotcha kind of recording.

What's extraordinary about them is that we don't usually get to hear how the wealthiest Americans or the tax professionals who help them push to pay less in taxes.

In these tapes, you hear how malleable that line between legal loophole and not-so-legal tax shelter really is.

The government told us in a statement that Mr. Keyes never lobbied on behalf of the Malta pension issues.

But in the recordings, you hear him walking people on the call through some of the possible strategies to defend the Malta loophole.

He argues treaties are the domain of Congress, so the IRS overstepped.

Their changes don't count.

They're also basically talking about delay tactics.

For some things in tax, if you can make it past the statute of limitations, you can sleep easy.

But in 2023, the IRS really goes on the offense about this.

They propose a rule.

We'll call it the come clean rule, which says if you or someone you advise stashed your appreciated assets into a Maltese account, you got to come tell us.

Come clean.