Tax Court Applies Willful Blindness to Find Civil Fraud by Clear and Convincing Evidence (1/19/13)

I have posted a discussion on this topic on my Federal Tax Crimes blog.  The title is the same, Tax Court Applies Willful Blindness to Find Civil Fraud by Clear and Convincing Evidence (1/19/13), here.  That gravamen of my discussion is that (i) in Fiore v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2013-21, the Tax Court applied the criminal law concept of willful blindness to find that the IRS had proved civil fraud to hold the taxpayer liable for the civil fraud penalty under Section 6663; and (ii) the Court's discussion of the concept of willful blindness is confusing.  Since willful blindness is a criminal law concept that certainly is not -- at least not yet -- mainstream in its application to the tax civil fraud discussion, I do not repeat the discussion here and just review readers to the discussion.