A jury convicted two -time Detroit mayoral candidate Thomas J. Barrow of tax evasion and bank fraud. But now, paradoxically, the U.S. Tax Court has concluded that the IRS "failed to prove to us that any particular underpayments were actually due to fraud."

Square this circle. A jury found Barrow committed fraud. But to prevail in separate Tax Court proceedings, the IRS had to precisely identify the specific underpayments. The court in Barrow's criminal trial hadn't done so. And yet, as Tax Court Judge Mark Holmes noted, "it would be inconsistent to hold no part of the underpayment due to fraud" since Barrow was, after all, convicted.

So Judge Holmes, in a rather remarkable case, settled on $1,000 as the sum total of Barrow's fraudulent underpayment. This seems, to my untutored reading, like a symbolic number: one designed to meet the inescapable fact of Barrow's prior conviction, while still being far less than the multiple thousands of dollars sought by the government.

The case gets muy technical -- it's Tax Court, after all -- but the 70-page opinion is worth reading, especially for aficionados of Detroit politics. The opinion is respectful of Barrow, described as a "pioneer for African-Americans in the accounting profession," and it's sympathetic to Barrow for the consequences he faced after he challenged Detroit Mayor Coleman Young in 1985. Barrow's company immediately lost its valuable city business, and matters worsened when he tried again in 1989. Judge Holmes noted:

Barrow experienced things he only thought happened in fiction, credibly testifying that someone broke into his home and stole only his briefcase. And that he found someone pulling documents from his
trash. And that police began to sit outside his home to observe who was coming and going.