IRS Hits Arizona Cardinals' Pro Bowl Safety With $2.2m Tax Bill

Forbes, IRS Hits Cardinals' Antrel Rolle With $2.2 Million Bill; Football Safety Sues After Audit Nixes His Big Charitable and Business Deductions, by William P. Barrett:

The IRS says Arizona Cardinals safety Antrel Rolle understated his taxable income by more than 50% during his first two years in pro football, sending him a $2.2 million bill for back taxes, interest and penalties.

The IRS claims are contained in a previously unreported lawsuit Rolle filed in U.S. Tax Court against the agency [docket no.  029453-09]. ... Rolle does not specifically dispute the IRS audit findings, which he attached to his pleading. The IRS findings state that it was discrepancies and inconsistencies in Rolle's own filings that accounted for most of the bill. Cited points included nonexistent or unlikely addresses, huge deductions claimed by Rolle for a personally run executive business and hard-to-locate churches listed as recipients of big cash gifts, with the amounts and descriptions of these donations changing. ...

Drawing particular IRS attention was Rolle's report of a Schedule C "sole proprietorship" involving "management and consulting" that he said he operated both years. Over that period he listed $557,000 in revenue and $1.9 million in expenses. The IRS disallowed all but $71,000 of the expenses, which included $254,000 for "advertising" and $372,000 classified as "rent or lease--vehicles." Rolle said his business was located at an address in Chandler, Ariz., a Phoenix suburb. But "correspondence mailed to that address was returned indicating 'no such number,' and electronic research turned up the same result," the IRS agent wrote. ...

Rolle also claimed $2.5 million in cash contributions to two churches with similar names in Granada Hills: $636,000 in 2005 to the Victory Chapel Christian Fellowship Church, or VCCFC, and $1.9 million in 2006 to Victory Chapel Church. ... 

Forbes took a spin through middle-class Granada Hills, which is bisected by the Ronald Reagan Freeway in the sprawling San Fernando Valley 25 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The official address listed for VCCFC is a copy shop mail drop. "We're not even open on Sundays," a worker there joked. The address listed in Rolle's IRS paperwork for Victory Chapel Church is a dermatology office fronted by a tall sign proclaiming treatment of "diseases of the skin." Workers there said they have never heard of Victory Chapel anything.