THE CNMI Division of Revenue & Taxation is questioning the $5.8 million tax lien that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service filed against the Commonwealth Casino Commission.
Rev & Tax legal counsel, Assistant Attorney General Dustin Rollins, provided the IRS’s Martin L. Humpbert copies of W-2s for the commission’s 10 employees during the 2022 tax year. Rollins said the 10 employees were included in the filings of the CNMI government, therefore “it appears the assessment of the tax lien is erroneous.”
During CCC’s monthly meeting on Thursday, the commission chair, Edward C. Deleon Guerrero, said he was “shocked” to hear about the $5.8 million tax lien against CCC. Normally, he said the IRS would communicate directly with the entity.
He noted that the tax lien notice was addressed to the Department of Finance, which processes the payroll and Social Security withholding tax of all CNMI government employees, including those working with CCC.
Deleon Guerrero said when Rev & Tax, which is under Finance, reviewed the IRS tax lien against CCC, it appeared that the tax lien was only for the fourth quarter of the 2022 tax year.
“It is practically impossible for CCC to have a $5.8 million tax lien for only the fourth quarter of 2022 when CCC only had 10 employees. So it’s obviously an erroneous figure,” he said.
He added that Rev & Tax had not received a response from the IRS.
“But I’m hoping that IRS would respond soon. I did discuss [this issue] with some other auditors and some of them are saying the IRS normally [does] not issue out tax liens. They normally would communicate with the entity and find out what’s happening and figure out what’s going on because we all know there are many other entities that have not paid Social Security, some other government agencies,” Deleon Guerrero said without elaborating.
Earlier this month, IRS filed a federal tax lien notice in federal court against CCC for the tax period ending Dec. 12, 2022.
According to the notice, CCC had an unpaid balance of $5,863,195.43 for payroll-related tax returns or IRS Form 941.
