March 21, 12

NEWS / Federal Court Bars Former Owner of Brooklyn Tax Firm from Operating Tax Preparation Businesses

A federal court has permanently barred Annie P. Williams, the former proprietor of PPH Tax & Realty Inc. in Brooklyn, N.Y., from preparing federal tax returns for others and from having any ownership or financial interest in any tax preparation business, the Justice Department announced today. The civil injunction order, to which Williams consented without admitting the allegations against her, was entered by Judge Dora L. Irizarry of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.



According to the government complaint in the case, Williams fostered an environment at PPH in which her part-time tax preparers, who had little or no tax experience, were encouraged to prepare fraudulent tax returns. The improper conduct alleged in the complaint included preparing federal tax returns that claimed false expense and charitable contribution deductions, bogus dependents and unallowable child and childcare tax credits.


The complaint also alleged that, during the time that Williams owned PPH, her employees sold other persons’ names and Social Security numbers to customers so that the customers could falsely report that those other persons were their childcare providers for purposes of falsely claiming the childcare tax credit. Employees also allegedly sold fake charitable contribution letters to customers to present to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) during audits to substantiate false deductions.



The IRS has listed return preparer fraud as one of the “Dirty Dozen” tax scams for 2012. The Justice Department’s Tax Division has obtained injunctions against hundreds of unscrupulous return preparers and tax-fraud promoters in the past decade. Information about these cases is available on the Justice Department website .

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/March/12-tax-349.html