CNMI Division of Revenue & Taxation questions IRS tax lien against casino regulator

The CNMI Division of Revenue & Taxation has cited potential errors in the assessment.

Northern Mariana Islands.- The CNMI Division of Revenue & Taxation is questioning a federal tax lien on the Commonwealth Casino Commission (CCC) for over US$5.86m in unpaid taxes from 2022 filed by the US Internal Revenue Service.

According to Mariana’s Variety, assistant attorney general Dustin Rollins, serving as legal counsel for Revenue & Taxation, said employees were included in the filings of the CNMI government. He has provided the IRS with copies of W-2 forms for the commission’s 10 employees for the 2022 tax year.

CCC board chair Edward DeLeon Guerrero had suggested that the lien might be an error on the IRS’s part since the CCC is a government agency. He said the Department of Finance handles all employee payroll and necessary withholdings and that a mailing address listed on the lien belongs to the CNMI Department of Finance.

Guerrero pointed out that the tax lien seemed to pertain only to the fourth quarter of the 2022 tax year. He argued that it was impossible for the CCC, with just 10 employees, to incur a US$5.8m tax lien for that period. Revenue & Taxation has yet to receive a response from the IRS.