Georgia Federal Court Permanently Bars Fulton County Man from Preparing Tax Returns

A federal court in Atlanta has permanently barred Derrick Jackson and his businesses from preparing federal tax returns for others. The court said that since 2002, Jackson "has prepared blatantly fraudulent tax returns for customers." Jackson’s businesses were called Tax Wisdom and International Tax and Accounting Services.

The court said that Jackson used an alias and false federal tax identification number to disguise his true identity from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) when preparing returns. The court also found that Jackson engaged in other unlawful conduct, such as filing phony W-2 forms and claiming false deductions and credits on customers’ tax returns, including fraudulent fuel tax credits and false earned income tax credits.

Fuel credit scams are on this year’s IRS list of the Dirty Dozen Tax Scams. In the past few years the Justice Department has obtained injunctions shutting down many tax preparers who claim the phony credits on customers’ returns.

John DiCicco, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Tax Division, thanked Grayson Hoffman, the Justice Department trial attorney who handled the case, and Shauna Henline, a technical advisor with the IRS’s Small Business/Self-Employed Division, who conducted the investigation.

In the past decade the Justice Department’s Tax Division has obtained injunctions against more than 405 tax-return preparers and tax-fraud promoters. Information about these cases is available on the Justice Department website.