No, I’m not ordering a round, and anyway I’m a Cardenal Mendoza man myself. But the story of the Family of Kaiyon, David & William Foundation, Inc., incorporated under Maryland law on July 24, 2018, and recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt public charity under section 501(c)(3) as of that date, is the real foundation of my interest in the case of  Dax Xavier Johnson, T. C. Memo. 2025-87, filed 8/18/25.

Dax’s story is a simple indocumentado, a pro se trial where Dax didn’t provide IRS with documents but did provide some less-than-stellar testimony, or so Ch J Patrick J. (“Scholar Pat”) Urda finds. Read for yourself; I find Dax’s Foundation, for which he claims he provides services through his cleaning business and to which he makes heavy-duty cash contributions, really interesting.

“The roots of the Foundation lay in family tragedy, the death of Mr. Johnson’s nephew. As Mr. Johnson saw it, the Foundation’s mission was to find the killer of Mr. Johnson’s nephew. The Foundation completed its work and obtained justice for Mr. Johnson’s nephew in 2019.” T. C. Memo. 2025-87, at p. 2. (Footnote omitted).

As usual, the footnote is fascinating.

“We assume that the Foundation disclosed this alleged purpose on its application for exempt status filed with the IRS, that this purpose qualifies under section 501(c)(3), and that expenditures for this purpose do not involve any private benefit or private inurement to Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson did not state these contentions in a pretrial memorandum in compliance with our standing pretrial order nor did he otherwise disclose them to opposing counsel before the trial. Since we sustain the denial of the deductions on substantiation grounds, we need not reach these issues.” T. C. Memo. 2025-87, at p. 2, footnote 4.

As for those cash contributions, though Dax had a Section 170 CWA from the Foundation, “Mr. Johnson was himself a board member of the Foundation that produced the letter. We have no information, from Mr. Johnson or any other witness, about the Foundation’s records that underlie the representations in its letter. The letter states that ‘receipts indicate that your [year at issue] monetary donations total $43,258.” But we are unsure of the meaning of ‘receipts’ in this context, given that Mr. Johnson testified that he made his donations in cash, by his own payment for Foundation operations such as securing witness participation. He further testified that he, not the Foundation, retained the ATM receipts that allegedly corresponded to his donations. And the amounts reflected by the purported receipts seem unusual given that Mr. Johnson’s gross income totaled $76,927 in [year at issue].” T. C. Memo. 2025-87, at p. 12.

“(H)e testified that his contributions consisted of cash withdrawn from his bank account via ATM over the course of [year at issue] and then paid on behalf of the Foundation to various informants in return for information. Mr. Johnson explained that ‘if you’re dealing with something . . . as serious as murder . . . cash is usually how people want to be paid.’ Mr. Johnson further represented that he had retained withdrawal receipts, which he did not supply to the IRS or at trial.” T. C. Memo. 2025-87, at p. 5.

Judge Scholar Pat confessed this caused him to “begin with some skepticism.” T. C. 2025-87, at p. 11. I entirely understand.