IRS Forces Okobji Lake Restaurant to Close Its Doors

A restaurant owner in Arnold's Park got the shock of her life, when out of no where, the IRS knocked on her door last year claiming they had seized her checking account. Was she being accused of money laundering, cheating on her taxes, or some other crime? Nope. The reason was quite a bit more shocking.Carole Hinders runs a popular Mexican restaurant off Okoboji Lake in Arnold's Park called "Mrs. Ladys". Maybe you've eaten there. You might remember as the restaurant is cash only. Not too uncommon for smaller restaurants. As such, her cash deposits are larger, and frequent, but repeatedly less than $10,000 at a time. She thought she was being safe keeping money out of the business. Problem is, the government makes the banks report whenever they is an over $10,000 deposit. So to the IRS, Mrs. Hinders was acting suspicious with these continuous large deposits "conveniently under the mark", as it looked like she was purposely avoiding the reporting.

This has left many small business owners terrified. Could you imagine at any time, they could come and seize your assets, without first proving your guilt? And then, you can't get your money back until your appeal is won. Apparently many others have gone through this, and eventually just given up on fighting the system, as they usually just can't afford the fight. It appears the same for Mrs. Hinders too, who has strained her credit cards and taken out a second mortgage, all in vain at this point, as she just announced the restaurant has been sold and will be closing down this week.

There is some good news however, as the IRS has looked into this policy, and will now focus instead on cases where the money is suspected of being acquired illegally. However deposits like these will always be suspicious.