COURT ORDERS HALT TO TEXAS MAN’S TAX PROMOTIONS

Ft. Worth Resident Must Give Customer Names
And Social Security Numbers To Justice Department

WASHINGTON D.C. - The Justice Department announced today that a federal court has ordered Dennis C. Styles of Fort Worth, Texas to stop selling two tax schemes called the “corporation sole” and “claim of right” programs. The order, entered by Judge Terry R. Means of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, found that promoting the two schemes is illegal. The order applies not only to Styles, but also to any entity through which he might do business and to anyone acting in concert with him.

According to papers filed in the case, Styles falsely advised prospective customers that his corporation sole program could exempt them from income taxation if they transferred their income and assets to a so-called corporation sole and claimed that it was a church. In the claim-of-right program, Styles allegedly falsely told customers told that compensation for their labor is not taxable, and they could therefore get refunds of past taxes paid. Court papers alleged that Styles worked with Joseph O. Saladino, through an organization called the Freedom & Privacy Committee, in promoting the schemes. Separate suits against Saladino, who lives in Palmdale, California and other alleged promoters are pending in several federal courts across the country.

The order, called a permanent injunction, requires Styles to give the Justice Department the names, addresses, and social security or tax identification numbers of all his customers. Additionally, Styles must remove materials about the banned promotions from his websites and must notify his customers of the court order.

“People who buy schemes purporting to eliminate their federal taxes are not only wasting their money, but risking serious penalties and possible prosecution,” said Eileen J. O’Connor, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Tax Division. “The Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service are working methodically and effectively to detect and stop the promotion of such schemes.”

O’Connor thanked Martin Shoemaker, the Tax Division trial attorney who handled the case, and the agents of IRS’s Small Business/Self-Employed Division who investigated it.

More information about this case and the related cases across the country is available at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/txdv04192.htm and http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/txdv04220.htm.

The Justice Department has sought and obtained injunctions against a number of tax-scam promoters. Information about these cases is available on the Justice Department website at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/taxpress2004.htm.

The corporation-sole and claim-of-right programs are included in the Internal Revenue Service’s list of the “Dirty Dozen” tax scams, available at http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=120803,00.html. Information about the Justice Department’s Tax Division can be found at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax.

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