Taxable Talk

There’s an etiquette involved in sending emails: You don’t use all capital letters in most cases. The same is true when you write; it’s poor form. Yet when Judge Timothy Black wrote about ITS Financial, LLC (aka Instant Tax Service) he began his decision to permanently enjoin ITS from operating or being involved in tax preparation in any way with a paragraph in all caps…and in bold. Less you think he didn’t have reason to do so, well:

The evidence at trial established that Ogbazion and his Defendant companies:

Clandestinely trained and encouraged ITS franchisees to prepare and file tax returns prematurely with paycheck stubs that omitted and understated income, and inevitably resulted in the submission of false federal tax returns;

Defrauded ITS customers, who are largely low-income, by marketing false and fraudulent loan products to lure customers into franchisees’ tax preparation offices;

Defrauded ITS customers by requiring franchisees to charge phony fees, as well as exorbitant fees, of which Defendants kept an average of 18%;

Forged customers’ signatures on loan checks and used those forged checks to operate Defendants’ businesses;

Willfully failed to pay their own employment taxes, and then lied about assets in connection with the collection of those taxes, hiding money in a secret bank account, defrauding the United States and third party creditors;

Lied on government forms, and encouraged franchisees to lie on government forms, including lying on IRS applications for EFINs and on IRS Forms 8879;

Obstructed government agents and materially assisted franchisees in circumventing IRS law enforcement efforts involving the suspension of EFINs;

Told franchisees to lie to government agents in connection with IRS compliance visits; and

Violated the terms of the Order of Preliminary Injunction issued by this Court.

Joe Kristan has more on why we’ve likely seen the end of Instant Tax Service.