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Earlier this year, Entrepreneur Magazine composed this article discussing the task small business owners loathe the most. TD Bank released the results of survey in which 508 small business owners revealed what they loved – and hated – about owning and running their own businesses. The best part was, overwhelmingly, flexibility and control. The most underwhelming part? Bookkeeping. A whopping 58 percent of those surveyed called bookkeeping “particularly draining.” This sentiment is not new. In fact, some people find it so draining they just don’t even do it.

For business owners, bookkeeping can be tedious, difficult, and just frustrating in general. While the correct course of action would be to hire a trained, qualified, and passionate accountant to handle the numbers, not every person has reached this conclusion. Every year the news networks have stories about various incidents of tax evasion. Realizing the actual repercussions of inaccurate bookkeeping is difficult to comprehend until it actually happens to you. Since this is one experience you will want to avoid, here’s are just a few of the most infamous tax evasion cases and consequences.

Al Capone

  • Convicted: 1931
  • Guilty Charges: Two misdemeanor counts of failure to file income tax; three felony counts of “attempting to evade and defeat” the income tax
  • Sentence: 11 years in federal prison (concurrent with 6 months in prison due to contempt); $50,000 fine, payment of $7,692 in court costs; $215,000 (plus interest)

No list of tax evasion offenders is complete without mentioning Al Capone. Even though income declaration wasn’t legally required until 1927 (well into Capone’s heyday), the bookkeeping mandate didn’t resonate with Capone. Instead of paying attention to how much Capone spent, the FBI watched how much money he made. Despite the balance between income and expenditures, the income tax evasion is what ultimately rendered Capone incarcerated – and broke.

Pete Rose

  • Convicted: 1990
  • Guilty Charges: Two charges of filing false income tax returns
  • Sentence: 5 months in the medium security United States Penitentiary Prison Camp; $50,000 fine; payment of $366,041 in back taxes and interest; 1000 hours of community service

Pete Rose was a MLB player for 23 years before managing the Cincinnatti Reds for five years. Unfortunately, his impressive baseball stats were not enough to sustain his lifestyle after his MLB years ended, so he sold his autographed items and other memorabilia to make a profit. Rose was also known to be a devoted horse race gambler as well. His failure to report the income from these activities – two years in a row – resulted in his conviction.

Ty Warner

  • Convicted: 2014
  • Guilty Charges: One felony count of tax evasion
  • Sentence: 2 years probation (mandatory jail time of five years was waived); $100,000 fine; payment of $53 million fine for civil penalty; payment of $27 million in back taxes; 500 hours of community service

Instead of Ty Warner’s name being synonymous with Beanie Babies, it is more often associated with being guilty of hiding millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts. Warner had actually applied for the IRS’s amnesty program in 2009, but was rejected. Warner was just one victim of a 5-year push to expose and dissolve U.S. tax evasion by keeping money in foreign accounts.

These might be some extreme cases, but they show the true price of not being attentive enough – or honest enough – to your ledgers. You may not want to deal with the numbers, and the truth is, you don’t have to deal with them all by yourself. Find an accountant you can work well with and trust. The fees and taxes you pay now are significantly less than the fees and (back) taxes you will pay in the future if you are lax with your bookkeeping.