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Nor can petitioners derive comfort from correspondence
between officials of the New Jersey Department of Labor and the
partnerships concerning their liabilities for employment taxes.
The New Jersey Department of Labor subsequently canceled the
unemployment tax accounts of the partnerships. The Department
transferred credits for the funds that had been ostensibly paid
by the partnerships from the partnerships' accounts to the
Machise account with the Department. The Department did so
because it ultimately determined that Machise was the party
liable for unemployment tax contributions. Its ultimate
determination, once it caught on to the charade, strengthens our
conclusion that the partnerships were not the employers, and
exposes the lack of significance of the earlier correspondence.
Petitioners have also failed to show that there was any
substance in the inclusion of the partnerships' names, as
"participants", on some of the employees' pension plan documents.
The plan documents reveal that the employees' pension plan
existed long before the partnerships were formed. Even after the
partnerships were formed, Bucci and Ingemi provided Machise's
money to fund the pension payments, as they had done for the
other payroll costs. Bucci, and not the partnerships, decided
where the pension deposits would be invested, and Machise’s
controller prepared the quarterly financial statements for the
plan. Petitioners have not shown that the partnerships performed
any meaningful role with respect to the pension payments or the
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