Thursday, December 20, 2012

DOJ – Tax News: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SEEKS TO SHUT DOWN NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE MO’ MONEY TAXES LICENSEE



Tax Return Preparers Allegedly Claim Improper Tax Credits and Prepare Fake W-2 Wage Forms for Customers 

The United States has asked a federal court to shut down a Mo’ Money Taxes tax preparation office in Nashville, the Justice Department announced today. The civil injunction suit, filed against Mo’ Money licensee Toney Fields and co-defendant Trumekia Shaw in U.S. District Court in Nashville, alleges that the two defendants intentionally prepare and file fraudulent federal income tax returns to obtain improper tax refunds for customers.

According to the complaint, Fields and Shaw get an improper jump on their competition by opening Mo’ Money Taxes in Nashville in late December and before the tax year ends. The defendants allegedly use customers’ end-of-year pay stubs to prepare tax returns, before employers have issued Internal Revenue Service (IRS) W-2 wage-statement forms to employees. Preparing tax returns based on pay stubs rather than proper W-2 Forms violates IRS rules. Fields and Shaw allegedly use the pay stubs to create fake W-2 Forms to include with the returns. End-of-the-year pay stubs frequently omit income and distributions that are shown on employer-issued W-2 Forms. This inevitably results in errors on federal tax returns.

The lawsuit further alleges that Fields and Shaw inflate or claim false tax credits on customers’ tax returns. According to the complaint, Fields and Shaw frequently claim improper dependent exemptions in order to claim inflated earned-income credits or child tax credits for their customers. The suit also alleges that the defendants include false filing statuses and bogus claims for charitable contributions on customers’ returns. The complaint says the government estimates that the defendants’ misconduct may have caused revenue losses of more than $5 million from the more than 1,100 tax returns they prepared in 2011.
The IRS lists return preparer fraud as one of its “Dirty Dozen” tax scams.

In the past decade the Justice Department’s Tax Division has obtained injunctions against hundreds of tax-return preparers and tax-fraud promoters. Information about these cases is available on the Justice Department website.


IRS Circular 230 Disclosure

Pursuant to the requirements of the Internal Revenue Service Circular 230, we inform you that, to the extent any advice relating to a Federal tax issue is contained in this communication, including in any attachments, it was not written or intended to be used, and cannot be used, for the purpose of (a) avoiding any tax related penalties that may be imposed on you or any other person under the Internal Revenue Code, or (b) promoting, marketing or recommending to another person any transaction or matter addressed in this communication.

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