- 92 -
and to stand to gain financially from the sale of both the
subject VEBA’s and the C-group product. Given the magnitude of
petitioners’ dollar investment in the C-group product and the
favorable consequences which Mr. Cohen represented flowed
therefrom, any prudent taxpayer, especially one who is as
educated as the physicians at bar, would have asked a tax
professional to opine on the tax consequences of the C-group
product. The represented tax benefits of the C-group product
were simply too good to be true. Such is especially so when we
consider the fact that the physicians who testified admitted that
they knew that term insurance was significantly less expensive
than the premiums purportedly paid under the C-group product
solely for term insurance.
Petitioners assert on brief that they also relied on tax
opinion letters written by tax attorneys and accountants. We do
not find that such was the case. The record contains neither a
credible statement by one or more of the individual petitioners
to the effect that he or she saw and relied on a tax opinion
letter, nor a tax opinion letter written by a competent,
independent tax professional. In fact, petitioners have not even
proposed a finding of fact that would support a finding that such
a tax opinion letter exists, let alone that any of them ever read
Page: Previous 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 NextLast modified: May 25, 2011