U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida seeking to bar Brandhi Shaw of Belle Glade, Florida, tax return preparer, from owning or operating a tax return preparation business and preparing tax returns for others, the Justice Department announced.
Some 180 million people file income tax returns every year. The U.S. income tax is very complicated. So people engage the services of a Tax Preparer to prepare their annual income tax return.
A tax preparer is registered with the Income Tax department. To become a tax preparer one has to have some accounting or legal qualification or pass an examination conducted by 1he income tax department. A tax preparer would charge from $124 to $273 to prepare simple Form 1040 tax return. Charges for small businesses and self employed persons may be more.
Brandhi Shaw has prepared returns claiming fabricated businesses income and/or expenses, and related fictitious losses, resulting in income tax credits. In one case Shaw claimed for her client a fabricated loss of $37,413 for a non-existent business, which fraudulently reduced the amount of the individual’s taxable income and, in return, his or her reported tax liability. It was estimated that the income tax department would have incurred a loss of $6 million as a result of false claims.
In the past decade, the Justice Department’s Tax Division has obtained injunctions against hundreds of unscrupulous tax preparers.
Source: Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs.
