Court Shuts Down Georgia Return Preparer

A federal court in Newnan, Georgia permanently enjoined Lucrezia Finch Henderson from preparing federal income tax returns for others, the Justice Department announced today.  The court also ordered Henderson to mail a copy of the injunction order to all customers for whom she prepared a return after January 1, 2015.

According to that complaint, Henderson prepares tax returns at Infinity Tax located at 104 Sage Commercial Drive, Suite B, in Lagrange, Georgia. As alleged in the complaint, Henderson engaged in abusive tax schemes such as reporting fake businesses on her customers’ returns in order to generate losses to lower their tax liabilities.  The Court found that Henderson falsely reported on several of her customers’ returns that each had a business that earned no money and had tens of thousands of dollars in expenses.  According to the complaint, Henderson used the losses from these fake businesses to offset her customers’ income and claim a larger tax refund than they were entitled to receive.

In addition, the Court found that Henderson falsely reported that her customers had education expenses in support of education credits the customers were not eligible to claim.  The complaint alleged that some of these customers did not even attend college that year. According to the complaint, the IRS audited about 110 returns prepared by Henderson for her customers and found that Henderson understated her customers’ tax liabilities by more than $650,000 in the aggregate.

Return preparer fraud was one of the IRS’s Dirty Dozen Tax Scams for 2018 and taxpayers seeking a return preparer should remain vigilant. The IRS has some tips on their website for choosing a return preparer and has launched a free directory of federal tax preparers. 

In the past decade, the Tax Division has obtained injunctions against hundreds of unscrupulous tax preparers. Information about these cases is available on the Justice Department’s website. An alphabetical listing of persons enjoined from preparing returns and promoting tax schemes can be found on this page. If you believe that one of the enjoined persons or businesses may be violating an injunction, please contact the Tax Division with details.

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Source: Justice.gov