Taxable Talk

Suppose you’re a tax “professional” and a client comes in who needs to file back tax returns. He presents his record of income for those years. You look at it and realize your client is going to owe a lot of tax. Do you (a) try to find every possible legal deduction for your client; (b) work with your client and the tax agencies to obtain a payment plan (or plans); or (c) tell him that if he shows that much income and he should just lower the amount—after all, he’ll never be caught?

Of course, since I headlined this as two from the Bozo preparer front, you know where this is heading. And yes, there are allegedly tax preparers who will do this. From Clarence, New York comes the story of Dara Lis. Ms. Lis’ client was an undercover investigator from the New York Department of Tax and Finance. Allegedly, Ms. Lis told the client (on tape), “As long as there’s no way for them to trace this income, you know, I would just lower it…real (income) numbers [are] going to kill you.”

Helpful tax hint: If your preparer tells you this, make a u-turn and find someone else.

The second story comes from Elm City, North Carolina. Raymond Renfrow used to be a professional tax preparer. He’s been barred from preparing future returns by a federal court. He promoted trusts that allegedly hid income without having any economic benefit. He used to be involved with Concept Marketing International. One of the founders of that entity was convicted of tax fraud, and a court order is prominently noted on their website. Mr. Renfrow allegedly started promoting similar trusts on his own.

Helpful tax hint #2: If your tax professional has a court order on his website that bars him from promoting tax fraud schemes, you may want to find someone else.

In any case, not only has Mr. Renfrow been barred, he’s also required to send a list of his customers to the Department of Justice. If you happen to be on that list you can expect a “Dear Valued Taxpayer” letter in your mailbox from the IRS very soon.

Tags: BozoTaxPreparer

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Tax Fraud, Tax Preparation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.