A U.S. District Court has barred Aric Elliot Schreiner and his company, the Columbia CPA Group, from abusing the use of charitable remainder annuity trusts for tax dodges. He has also been ordered this month to disgorge $400,000 in proceeds he earned.The court order prohibits Scheiner and Columbia from organizing, promoting, selling or marketing tax schemes involving the use of CRATs. Scheiner is the last of six defendants that were sued in February 2022 to have agreement to a permanent injunction.
The government alleges Schreiner told customers that via use of the CRATs they could avoid reporting the sale of property to the IRS and paying federal income tax by utilizing the following steps:
*Transferring to a CRAT; *Stepping-up the cost basis in the property on tax documents; *Selling the property and using the sale proceeds to purchase an annuity; *Receiving payments from the annuity but failing to report the annuity payments as income on tax forms.
Schreiner prepared tax forms to implement the scheme.
