Skip to main content
Press Release

Cleveland Attorney Charged With Tax Violations

For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Ohio

Attorney Ronald L. Rosenfield was charged in an information with failing to report and pay approximately $196,832 of employment taxes announced United States Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach.  The case is assigned to United States District Judge John R. Adams in Akron.
 
The unpaid taxes consisted of income taxes and FICA taxes withheld from the wages paid by his law firm, Ronald Rosenfield Co., L.P.A., including his own wages, for the eighteen consecutive calendar quarters from December 2006 through March 2011, according to the information.  The information also alleges that Rosenfield failed to report and pay an unspecified amount of additional employment taxes for all of the prior quarters dating back to June 2001.

At all relevant times, Rosenfield retained a national payroll firm, which prepared the law firm’s required employment tax returns for him to file with the Internal Revenue Service.  Rosenfield, however, did not file any of those returns and made no payments of the taxes reported on those returns, according to the information.  Moreover, the information alleges that Rosenfield claimed credits on his personal income tax returns for his unpaid income tax withholdings.

Rosenfield, age 70, resides in South Euclid, Ohio, according to court documents.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys John M. Siegel and Justin J. Roberts, following an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation, Independence, Ohio.

If convicted, the defendant’s sentence will be determined by the court after review of factors unique to this case, including the defendant’s prior criminal record, if any, the defendant’s role in the offense and the characteristics of the violation. In all cases, the sentence will not exceed the statutory maximum and in most cases it will be less than the maximum.

An information is only a charge and is not evidence of guilt. A defendant is entitled to a fair trial in which it will be the government’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Updated March 12, 2015