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bookkeeping. Yet his testimony illustrated that his feigned
ignorance was nothing more than an attempt to conceal his
knowledge of his intentional understatement of income. Moreover,
he admitted that he knew that all of the checks from the various
attorneys were income to him and that he was required to report
this income on his returns. He stated that he knew almost all of
the attorneys would not file Forms 1099 with the Internal Revenue
Service, reporting their payments of income to petitioner. As
such, it was imperative that he maintain adequate records. See
Aflalo v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1994-596.
In fact, petitioner made a copy of each check, and at trial
he testified that he kept a list containing a running tally of
the checks. Although these records were more than adequate to
determine gross income, petitioner conveniently failed to give
such records to Mr. Bruno. We note that after respondent's
examination began, the same types of records were given to Mr.
Bruno for the preparation of the 1989 and 1990 returns. When
questioned why the list and copies of the income checks were not
given to Mr. Bruno for the preparation of the 1987 and 1988
returns, especially since he gave Mr. Bruno all the canceled
checks necessary to substantiate expenses, petitioner's only
response was that Mr. Bruno did not ask him for his income
records. The more believable explanation is that petitioner did
not give Mr. Bruno the list and copies of his income checks
because he intended to understate his income for 1987 and 1988.
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