Two New York City tax preparers are facing prison time and the payment of substantial sums of money in a pair of recent cases.
Joseph Cadet, a tax preparer who operated tax return preparation businesses in Canarsie, Brooklyn, was sentenced last Friday by Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn Federal Court to 41 months and ordered to pay back $102,000 to the government. Last year, he was found guilty of preparing false tax returns by inflating deductions on Schedule A, C and E forms that he filed for clients.
Ivan Coss was sentenced to 18 months in prison for preparing tax returns as part of a large conspiracy to defraud the government. He was ordered to pay back $3,166,143 in restitution for the scheme in which he was involved. Coss prepared fraudulent tax returns out of an apartment in Manhattan and in Pennsylvania using the identification information of people in Puerto Rico. He began his prison term last month.
The tax return preparer industry is at the dawn of a new era of accountability, said IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Joseph Foy. With new rules regulating the industry, tax preparers who prepare fraudulent tax returns will stand out even more. These sentences are a reminder that all tax professionals have to respect the law and protect the interests of their clients and the taxpaying public.
