How to address a Conclusory Statement I understand that a conclusory statement consists of, or relates to, a conclusion or assertion for which no supporting evidence is offered. UPDATE: Assume that Bob worked in the US in 2021 and had a duty to pay Federal income tax and failed to do so. For example, as a working American, Bob has a duty to file and pay Federal income tax. An IRS investigator sends a letter to Bob indicating Bob did not file and pay his 2021 federal income tax. The investigator demands a timely written response. The investigator asks Bob if he will file 2021 and any delinquent taxes immediately with the required penalty. Bob replies to the investigator with: I [Bob] have been in the work force for 35+ years and filed / paid taxes many times. Thus, I have not violated relevant tax law and will not agree to pay any penalty. Bob's claim of not violating law, relies on past performance of filing taxes. As I understand it: Bob has a duty to file and pay taxes for each and every working year and it is obvious that the years prior to the year in question are irrelevant. I would like to understand (preferably from legal practitioners that have effectively used this term) if said claim is conclusory?
I [Bob] have been in the work force for 35+ years and filed / paid taxes many times. Thus, I have not violated relevant tax law and will not agree to pay any penalty. This is not a conclusory statement. It is an irrelevant statement. Example 1: &quot;Bob was not required to file a 2021 tax return. Therefore no offence has been committed.&quot;. This is conclusory because it offers a conclusion without explaining how it was reached (why was Bob not required to file a 2021 tax return?). Example 2: &quot;Bob filed his 2020 tax return. Therefore no offence has been committed&quot;. This is irrelevant because the alleged offence relates to 2021, not 2020. You can work out the difference by imagining what would happen if Bob substantiated his claims. If Bob submits evidence to show that he has been &quot;in the work force for 35+ years and filed / paid taxes many times&quot;, it will make no difference to his case because it is irrelevant (unless he can also show that he filed and paid in relation to 2021 specifically). A conclusory statement on the other hand is capable of being effective if it is backed up by supporting evidence and arguments. In example 1 above, if Bob submits evidence to show that he was not required to file in 2021, then his conclusion will be effective. Note: the phrase &quot;conclusory statement&quot; does not appear to be a commonly used one, returning only 171,000 results on Google. I've personally not come across it (england-and-wales), but perhaps it is more common elsewhere.
It should be legal (though I can't find an analogous case where the court has ruled that it is). There is a regulation summarizing the government's position (thus, what will be enforced in 17 CFR 240.10b, which prohibits use of "manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance" in stock trading. Section 240.10b5-1 says: The “manipulative and deceptive devices” prohibited by Section 10(b) of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78j) and §240.10b-5 thereunder include, among other things, the purchase or sale of a security of any issuer, on the basis of material nonpublic information about that security or issuer, in breach of a duty of trust or confidence that is owed directly, indirectly, or derivatively, to the issuer of that security or the shareholders of that issuer, or to any other person who is the source of the material nonpublic information. The executives clearly have a direct duty of trust of confidence. Section 240.10b5-2 enumerates the following duties: (1) Whenever a person agrees to maintain information in confidence; (2) Whenever the person communicating the material nonpublic information and the person to whom it is communicated have a history, pattern, or practice of sharing confidences, such that the recipient of the information knows or reasonably should know that the person communicating the material nonpublic information expects that the recipient will maintain its confidentiality; or (3) Whenever a person receives or obtains material nonpublic information from his or her spouse, parent, child, or sibling; provided, however, that the person receiving or obtaining the information may demonstrate that no duty of trust or confidence existed with respect to the information, by establishing that he or she neither knew nor reasonably should have known that the person who was the source of the information expected that the person would keep the information confidential, because of the parties' history, pattern, or practice of sharing and maintaining confidences, and because there was no agreement or understanding to maintain the confidentiality of the information. In the hypothetical, (1) is plainly not applicable. (2) is predicated on having a relationship (which doesn't exist) and the information-having expecting you to keep the information secret (he doesn't know that you have overheard them). (3) is likewise not applicable. The basic rule is that you can't "misapproprate" information, but you can use information that falls into your lap (even from a person who has a duty to not disclose the information). This subsection starts saying "For purposes of this section, a “duty of trust or confidence” exists in the following circumstances, among others", which means they aren't necessarily giving you an exhaustive list. Still, there is currently no legal basis for prosecuting a person who overhears information from someone he has no relationship to, even if you are pretty confident that the information has not been made public.
They have the same standard of proof but different onus The legal system places the onus of proving an allegation on the person making the allegation. For your example, this is A if they are suing B or the government prosecutor if B is being prosecuted. The standard of proof is “beyond reasonable doubt” if B is defending a criminal prosecution and “balance of probabilities” if B is defending a civil prosecution or a lawsuit. Courts have historically been reluctant to define these terms further because doing so can lay grounds for an appeal if the judge oversteps so they mean what their plain English formulation means and what they mean precisely in any given case is one of the things the trier of fact has to decide. For A or the prosecutor to win, they have to meet this burden for each and every element of the offence or cause of action; if they don’t, then B wins. So, B doesn’t have to offer a defence at all and will still win if A doesn’t meet their burden. If B does offer a defence then the trier of fact compares the evidence of each side and decides which they prefer and therefore whether A has met their burden. A jury doesn’t have to give reasons for their decision; a judge does. In general, the decisions of the trier of fact are not appealable unless there was no reasonable basis in evidence to support the decision. For example, the evidence of B might not be believed - this is fine, unless the reason for not believing it is that B has a beard and everyone with beards are liars. Options 2 and 3 are simple matters of comparing evidence and deciding which is preferred. Option 1 is different; it is what’s called an affirmative defence. Here, A has met their burden because B conceded. Now B is relying on the position that they had a legal excuse, that is B is alleging a position and B has the burden of proving it. Now, the burden on B is always “balance of probabilities” because B is not alleging that anyone committed a crime so they don’t have to reach the criminal standard.
31 USC 330 enables the Dept. of Treasury to regulate those who are in the practice of representing persons before the Department. This results in Circular 230 which is a part of the Code of Federal Regulations. Part 10.3 specifies various types who are authorized to engage in the practice. The meaning of "practice" is not defined in the federal regs or the US code, so it has its ordinary meaning. To "practice" something is to habitually do something as a profession (not necessarily for money). The situation you describe does not in any reasonable interpretation constitute being a "practice". Moreover, except for talking to an IRS agent on the phone, the actions could not be construed as "representing" (and if I am correct in surmising that this was a simultaneous conversation with 3 people on the line, this wasn't "representing" since representing meaning to "do in someone's place", not "help someone while they do"). This contrasts with the typically stricter rules about "practicing law", which forbid filling out legal forms and so on.
So these are the basic rules of the tax game: The taxpayer (employee, in this case) is liable for tax on income earned by him. On occasion, the payor of the income to be received by the taxpayer is required to withhold tax on the payment, remit the withheld tax to the IRS/state/local tax authority and pay the balance over to the taxpayer. If that happens, the taxpayer is entitled to a credit against his taxes for the amount withheld by the payor. Failure by the payor to withhold the required amount of tax does NOT excuse the taxpayer from paying tax on the income he earned. So company B is right.
When it can be “reasonably read both to impart a defamatory inference and to affirmatively suggest that the author intended or endorsed that inference.” Which is the standard the New York appeals court endorsed in 2014 for “defamation by implication”. So, on the face of the statements, they have to imply fraud and they have to show that the speaker intended to imply fraud. Whether they did that is up to the jury.
This is one of the things Martha Stewart was convicted of. 18 USC 1001 is the US federal law requiring truthfulness. That statute forbids you to falsify, conceal, or cover up a material fact. One limitation on how broad this law is, is that it has to be a matter "within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States". If your neighbor is an FBI agent and he asks if you're the one who broke his window, and you lie, that's not a federal matter. Another limitation is that the lying has to be material. The essential part of the law is subsection (a). Subsection (b) then states an exception: (b) Subsection (a) does not apply to a party to a judicial proceeding, or that party’s counsel, for statements, representations, writings or documents submitted by such party or counsel to a judge or magistrate in that proceeding. Then you also owe a lesser duty of truthfulness to the legislature. Taking note of US. v. Yermian, it is not required that the person you lie to be a federal officer. Yermian lied to his employer, who was a defense contractor, and the fact that the relevant form was submitted to the government for scrutiny is what made it a matter in federal jurisdiction. Comparing the wording of 1001 to the perjury statute, the operative expression for perjury involves statements "which he does not believe to be true", we can see that the perjury statute requires telling the literal truth (see Bronston v. US), which allows so-called lies of omission (of a particular subtype: much more could be said about that). In contrast the lying statute forbids both literally false statements and concealing of the truth. I don't have cases at my fingertips that indicate how broad your truthful answers have to be, for example if you think the FBI is trying to put away a friend and ask you about what he did on June 14, and you know that he did a bad thing on June 13, would it be lying in the relevant sense to conceal that fact which they didn't ask about. [ADDENDUM] A session of perusing cases has led to a tiny bit of further information. A literal reading of the statute says that you are in violation of the law if you falsify a fact (sloppy epistemology, unless it refers just to altering records and evidence), or conceal a fact, and the courts recognise this as a fundamental division. As for falsifying, the way that has been applied is to refer to cases where the accused makes a statement which asserts something that he knows to be untrue. Thus, saying "No" to a question when the truth is "Yes" is a violation. A propos concealment, in US v. Diogo 320 F.2d 898 the court states that False representations, like common law perjury, require proof of actual falsity; concealment requires proof of wilful nondisclosure by means of a 'trick, scheme or device.' This case is pre-Bronston so there is mixing of concepts from perjury law and lying law, which would not happen now, but we can steering clear of their perjury citations. The crucial fact is that accused(s) were technically married in New York, for immigration purposes, and they were accused of a 1001 violation for having indicated that they were married. Part of the government's case was that such a marriage is not valid, and the court rejected that conclusion. The government's second prong was to maintain that the court "should affirm appellant's convictions on a theory of concealment", and this too the court rejected, saying "proof of their ulterior motives in marriage would not be tantamount to proof of willful and knowing concealment of these material facts". What they said on the forms was literally true, and they did not have a duty to volunteer information that they probably knew the government was interested in. Contrarily in a later case, US v. Zalman 870 F.2d 1047 we are told that the underlying purpose of a marriage is a material fact which bears upon the validity of the marriage, and that any false or fraudulent misrepresentation regarding the actual purpose of a marriage in order to gain status as a resident of the United States can be punished under 18 U.S.C.A. § 1001 so you have to be more truthful than the literal truth standard. There are also circumstances where there is an independent duty to give information, such as reporting income to the IRS. In US v. Hernando Ospina 798 F.2d 1570 the court maintained It is clear that in order to support a section 1001 concealment conviction there must be a legal duty to disclose the facts the defendant was convicted of concealing citing US v. Tobon-Builes 706 F.2d 1092, where again there was a legal duty to report "existence, origin, and transfer of approximately $185,200 in cash". In other words, it is not clear what information you are allowed to not volunteer when asked a question in a federal matter.
Yes, in england-and-wales the Criminal Finances Act 2017 introduced 'Unexplained Wealth Orders', which compel the respondent to provide a statement: (a) setting out the nature and extent of the respondent’s interest in the property in respect of which the order is made, (b) explaining how the respondent obtained the property (including, in particular, how any costs incurred in obtaining it were met), (c) where the property is held by the trustees of a settlement, setting out such details of the settlement as may be specified in the order, and (d) setting out such other information in connection with the property as may be so specified. There a few requirements set out in section 362B, for example, the property must have value of over £50,000; there should be &quot;reasonable grounds&quot; for suspicion that the respondent would have been unable to obtain the property using their lawfully obtained income; the respondent or their connections must have either been involved in serious or organised crime, or be a politically exposed person, and so on. If the respondent refuses to make such a statement, the police may apply for a Civil Recovery Order to confiscate the property, with the property in question &quot;presumed to be recoverable property&quot; (section 362C(2)). Giving false information in such a statement is a criminal offence.