Top Connecticut tax scofflaws owe millions, including millionaires, businesses, and the deceased

The only things certain in life, the adage says, are death and taxes.

But even after death, the Connecticut state tax department will still pursue tax scofflaws for what they owe.

That is the case in the state’s Top 100 — a public list of the largest tax scofflaws for folks who have not paid their bills.

The Top 20 alone owe a combined $30 million, and that is just a small portion of the millions that are owed statewide among hundreds who owe amounts large and small.

Overall, five individuals and 11 businesses owe at least $1 million each in various categories, including the state income tax, sales, corporation, and pass-through entity taxes. Forty-four of the top 100 owe at least $500,000 each, and the remainder all owe more than $282,000 each.

Among the biggest scofflaws is former Stamford hedge fund manager Francisco Illarramendi, who was sentenced in 2015 to 13 years in federal prison after prosecutors said he ran the largest Ponzi scheme in state history. He still owes the state $1.36 million in personal income taxes, according to the list. He spent millions to construct a six-bedroom, seven-bath home in New Canaan, which was sold by a court-appointed receiver assigned to recover lost funds for investors.

The list includes several estates of prominent people who have died, including eight estates owing at least $295,000 each. The estate of former New England Patriots football star Aaron Hernandez owes $533,000, according to the list. Hernandez was found guilty in 2015 of the first-degree murder of his former friend, Odin Lloyd, and was serving life in prison when he died in 2017 in a case that was ruled as suicide.

The list also includes famed defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Thomas Puccio of Weston, who died in 2012 and whose estate owes more than $930,000 in state income tax. He served as the attorney for high-profile defendants like Darien High School wrestler and convicted rapist Alex Kelly and won an acquittal for attorney Claus von Bulow at his second trial in the attempted murder of his millionaire socialite wife, Sunny, at their Newport, Rhode Island mansion. She lived in a vegetative state for nearly 28 years before her death in 2008.

State tax commissioner Mark Boughton declined to comment on any individuals or corporations on the list, citing confidentiality laws regarding tax returns.

But he said that state officials continue pursuing tax collections after a person’s death.

“They will stay on there until the estate has gone through probate and is settled,” Boughton said in an interview. “We carry the debt for 10 years, and then we wipe it off if there’s no assets. We have to do our due diligence to determine that first. The disputes could be going on for 10 years. Sometimes probate cases go on for years as heirs argue over what the assets are until there’s a final determination of who gets what.”

The Top 100 list changes on a regular basis as taxpayers pay what they owe and others join the list. While some businesses listed as LLCs require some research, Boughton said state officials can sometimes track down scofflaws quickly.

“It’s not as hard as you think,” Boughton said in an interview. “You’d be surprised what people put on Facebook.”

The Top 100 scofflaws have addresses all around the nation, including California, Florida, Texas, Michigan, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Dakota, and Puerto Rico, among others. They are also based in New York City, Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Kansas City, Dallas, Las Vegas, Reno, Nashville, Naples, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Toronto.

Tracking down the scofflaws is an elaborate, multifaceted effort with multiple workers in different roles.

“We have people who look at paperwork, documents, houses purchased,” Boughton said. “There are people who do the audit, and then in the audit process, there may be flags in that that are forwarded to our enforcement division, and then we take it from there. We have people who do online searches and all kinds of things like that. We also have an investigatory team as well who are certified officers that carry firearms who will do investigations about people who are maybe trafficking cigarettes. So we have two arms that do this work — one that works directly with the auditors and the other one that is strictly straight-up investigations.”

Businesses

Among businesses, the list includes limited liability companies and limited partnerships with names that are not known to the general public and might include only a series of letters from the alphabet.

Those businesses owe taxes in a variety of categories, including the pass-through entity tax that was created in 2018 as a work-around for taxpayers snagged by the maximum federal deduction of $10,000 in their state and local taxes, known as SALT, under then-President Donald J. Trump.

The pass-through entity tax now ranks as the third-highest tax generator in Connecticut at about $2 billion for the just-completed fiscal year — behind only the state income tax at $11.8 billion and the state sales tax at $5 billion.

In the past, the state has offered amnesty programs as an incentive for taxpayers to come forward and settle their accounts. The incentive was that penalties were waived and interest was cut by 75%, which generated millions in collections. Of the total, $1.2 million came from a business that had been disputing its taxes since 2014 and had an accumulated debt with penalties and interest totaling $3.2 million.

But the most recent amnesty ended last year, and officials said at the time that they did not expect another one in the immediate future.

Public lists in many states

Like Connecticut, more than 20 states publish similar tax delinquent lists under their state laws, including New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and California.

“When someone fails to pay the tax that is owed by law, everyone suffers, and honest taxpayers must shoulder an extra burden,” Rhode Island’s tax administrator, attorney Neena S. Savage, says online in a statement. “Posting the lists is a way to encourage tax delinquents to pay what they owe, come back into compliance with the law, and ease the burden on the overwhelming majority of taxpayers who pay what they owe and pay it on time.”

In California, the state’s lists include the Top 500 businesses that owe more than $100,000 in sales tax collections in a document that is posted quarterly under the law. The list includes automobile dealers, fast-food restaurants, furniture outlets and pizza parlors, among others.

Not giving up

Some of the cases are long and complicated, involving court cases as Connecticut tax collectors try to collect the money around the nation.

“Florida is a frequent destination for us. That’s all I can say,” Boughton said. “I just settled a bunch of cases last summer that went back five, six, seven years. On the average, you can figure about three to five years on somebody that’s actually in court if they’re well-financed. Generally speaking, the larger the dollar amount, the longer it takes because obviously there’s serious money in play and people have the resources to hire a team of lawyers to argue with us.”

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com.