WASHINGTON – The United States has asked a federal court in Detroit to bar Carlos Brown from preparing federal tax returns for others, the Justice Department announced today. The civil injunction suit alleges that Brown and his business, Express Finance and Processing Services, prepare fraudulent tax returns for customers seeking large refunds based on a frivolous theory called “redemption” or “commercial redemption,” which has been rejected by numerous courts.
The complaint alleges that Brown, a resident of Detroit, prepares returns claiming huge fraudulent refunds based on fabricated income tax withholding reported on false Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Forms 1099-OID. According to the complaint, Brown has allegedly sought more than $13 million in fraudulent refunds on at least 45 tax returns, including a bogus claim on one customer’s return for a refund in excess of $1.75 million.
In the complaint, the government also requests that the court order Brown to provide the government with a list of all persons for whom he has prepared federal tax returns since 2008.
Claiming bogus tax refunds on false Forms 1099-OID is one of the IRS’s “Dirty Dozen” tax scams for 2011. In the past decade, the Justice Department’s Tax Division has obtained injunctions against hundreds of tax fraud promoters and unscrupulous tax return preparers. Information about these cases is available on the Justice Department website.
Source: US Department of Justice
