In the Courts

In United States v. Hoskins, No. 10-4092, 2011 WL 3555337, *3 (10th Cir. Aug. 12, 2011), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld the sentence imposed by the lower court.

Roy Hoskins and his wife Jodi owned and operated a Salt Lake City escort service, called Concessions. That business did not file its own tax returns but, rather, its income was reported on Hoskins' personal tax return. In May 2008, a grand jury charged Hoskins with tax evasion for 2001 and 2002. The government alleged that Hoskins had failed to report over $2 million in Concessions income, including large cash receipts, which resulted in a tax loss of $817,895. Hoskins quickly pleaded guilty. At sentencing he presented an alternative calculation of the tax loss, including a number of unclaimed deductions, identifying a total loss of $228,740. Such a calculation, if accepted, would have reduced Hoskins' guidelines calculation from 51-63 months down to 46-57 months. On appeal, Hoskins claimed that the court should have accounted for his unclaimed deductions and reduced the tax loss accordingly. Interestingly, in light of the Tenth Circuit's ruling in United States v. Spencer, 178 F.3d 1365 (10th Cir. 1999) (suggesting that a district court should not take into account deductions that a defendant might have claimed on his inaccurate tax returns), counsel for Hoskins abandoned his sole argument. Although the court found that it was thus required to affirm the district court's ruling, it noted that the court did not err in any event. The government was required to prove the amount of the loss, but was not required to do so with certainty.