If only we could take a charitable donation made in, say, 2001, and by using a magic printer we could magically change the receipt date to 2011. Imagine all of the donations we could suddenly recycle. Ignoring the illegal nature of this, consider the numerous other applications of such a magical printer outside of tax: No more typographical errors; we could change answers on exams after we got them back; and we’d never have another losing sports bet.
Of course, such a printer doesn’t exist.
So that brings us to a news release from the Department of Justice. Maria Teresita Viray, a tax preparer from Reseda, California (in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles), told her clients that she had such a magical printer. From the Department of Justice press release: “The complaint states that Viray told one customer that she had a special printer that allowed her to change the dates and amounts on charitable contribution receipts.” Added to her problems was allegedly creating phony deductions…and that the IRS discovered this. The Department of Justice was successful in obtaining an injunction prohibiting her from preparing any more tax returns.
If you happened to be one of the “thousands” who used Ms. Viray, you may receive a “Dear Valued Taxpayer” letter informing that your return is being audited; Ms. Viray was ordered to provide a list of her clients to the government.
Finally, this is yet another story of how regulation and mandatory continuing education will prevent such fraud. Well, not really: Ms. Viray appears to have been registered with CTEC (the California agency that regulates non-EAs, non-CPAs, and non-attorney who prepare tax returns). Yet the government lost an estimated $45 million from Ms. Viray’s alleged shenanigans. I leave the obvious conclusion to you….
Tags: PreparerRegistration