Tom Goldstein’s arguments challenging the criminal tax charges he’s facing are meritless, if not borderline frivolous, prosecutors said in filings before a federal court.
The law requires taxpayers to pay taxes and file returns when they’re due, not “at some later date that a taxpayer belatedly chooses,” the government said.
Prosecutors allege that Goldstein’s failure to pay his taxes on time had nothing to do with a lack of funds or knowledge—rather, he opted to spend his money on luxury items and travel.
The government’s response, filed Wednesday, lists some of Goldstein’s spending in years he owed substantial back taxes, including around $380,000 for a luxury villa in Saint Barthélemy and almost $220,000 on luxury watches.
The government also attacked Goldstein’s claim that his alleged mischaracterization of law firm funds and expenditures aren’t affirmative acts for purposes of the tax evasion charges.
According to Goldstein, the government needed to allege that he affirmatively instructed his office managers to mischaracterize the transactions. But legal and otherwise innocent acts can constitute affirmative acts of tax evasion if undertaken in order to conceal funds from or mislead the Internal Revenue Service, the response said.
Prosecutors claim Goldstein evaded paying his taxes by using firm funds to pay personal expenses while affirmatively keeping his office managers and accountants in the dark.
“This is a clear-cut affirmative act,” prosecutors said.
Goldstein also argued that his diversion of fees owed to the firm in order to cover personal debts can’t be affirmative acts because the payors were obligated to file Forms 1099 with the IRS reporting the payments, and he did nothing to interfere with that reporting obligation.
Even if the payors could hypothetically prevent Goldstein from evading his taxes, he still “affirmatively instructed third parties to divert payments with the intent to and knowledge that doing so would obscure his true taxable income,” the government said.
He shouldn’t “be allowed to dodge the consequences of the affirmative steps he took to evade taxes by complaining that his office managers or accountants failed to catch his crimes.”
The government’s filings were in response to a slew of motions that Goldstein filed last month in an attempt to winnow the government’s January indictment. He faces four counts of tax evasion, 10 counts of aiding and assisting the preparation of a false and fraudulent tax return, five counts of willful failure to pay taxes, and three counts of false statements on a loan application.
Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby of the US District Court for the District of Maryland is presiding over the case.
Goldstein is represented by Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.
The case is United States v. Goldstein, D. Md., No. 8:25-cr-00006-LKG, 6/18/25.
