The size of that penalty for such an oversight seems more than a bit egregious to me. And all because they failed to file a form?
This is obviously something that can cause tremendous harm to the company and it occurs to me that an example such as this is not really such a good idea in this particular (new) political environment. Its just the sort of IRS overreach that makes the papers when looking for examples of why President Elect Trump wants to roll back so many regulations. In fact it might be worth while to raise the issue to highlight it in hopes of seeing the company get this reversed and resolved so the company won't go BK. I saw on another post where ERHC has influence with the Kenya government but what about the US government? Perhaps they should think of approaching their Kenya contacts and ask them to intervene diplomatically so the Kenya people are not shorted if everything goes south because of the lien.
Middy - as a practicing accountant you have undoubtedly seen many such circumstances in your career and I suspect they don't all turn out to be total busts. Are you aware of instances where such decisions are reassessed and overturned? What sort of strategy is involved and what would it cost to successfully pursue that?
Next question? If this whole mess is truly due to failure to make a timely filing, that responsibility belongs to someone. And under such circumstances (particularly when the consequences are so critical) someone will be held accountable. Ultimately, I suspect that the standard line of thinking is that the buck stops at the CEO/CFO, but that is not quite the perspective I am interested in exploring with you here. We noted they just replaced their Certified Public Accountants to go with another firm - it seems to me that besides all the many issues we have heard tossed about on this message board, something I have not heard yet is the angle involving professional errors and omissions. Most professionals will carry such insurance coverage to protect them from personal liability and it would seem to me that if ERHC has not started pursuit of some sort of monetary damages to address the error, then it would make sense to start that. At the very least it would be a possible source of funds to pay off the lien. And getting this one thing resolved as quickly as possible would put them in a much better position for everything else - don't you think?
I'd be interested in your thoughts on this. Thanks.
