Justice Department Sues to Shut Down Alabama Tax Return Preparer

WASHINGTON – The United States has filed a lawsuit seeking to stop Aurelia Sanderson Johnson of Montgomery, Ala., from preparing tax returns for others, the Justice Department announced today. In the civil injunction suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, the United States alleges that Johnson, operating under the trade names "Johnson Tax Service" and "On-Time Tax Service" employed at least two schemes on returns she prepared for customers in order to obtain false or overstated refunds.

According to the complaint, Johnson has prepared at least 1,000 returns since 2006. Johnson allegedly prepared returns reporting fictitious information to inflate or generate false earned income tax credits. In addition, Johnson has allegedly prepared returns with fabricated business expense deductions on her customers’ returns leading to underreported income and bogus refunds.

The Internal Revenue Service has listed tax return preparer fraud as one of its "Dirty Dozen" tax scams for 2010. The Department of Justice has obtained injunctions against hundreds of tax-return preparers and tax-fraud promoters in the past 10 years. Information about these cases is available on the Justice Department website.