Criminal Prosecution of Tax Return Preparers

Over 61 percent of individual taxpayers, accounting for more than 76 million returns, utilized the services of paid preparers in 2005.(1) However, hiring a paid preparer does not assure the taxpayer or the government that the return will be prepared correctly. Tax return preparer fraud generally involves the preparation and filing of false income tax returns by preparers who claim inflated personal or business expenses, false deductions, unallowable credits or excessive exemptions on returns completed for their clients or fictitious taxpayers. Preparers may also manipulate income figures to fraudulently obtain tax credits, such as the earned income tax credit.(2) The Criminal Investigation (CI) division of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) prosecutes the most serious cases of preparers suspected of criminal or fraudulent behavior and other related financial crimes. This article investigates the role of CI in prosecuting tax return preparers and analyzes the results of 377 published tax return preparer criminal tax cases from 2000 through 2005. The paper also reviews various alternatives for discouraging fraudulent behavior, including registration of all paid preparers, automatic return preparation by the IRS, more stringent preparer penalties, and improved collection of assessed preparer penalties.