A federal court has permanently barred Kathleen Sims-Crawford and KSC Business Support Services Inc. from preparing federal tax returns for others, the Justice Department announced today. The civil injunction order, entered by Judge John J. Tharp Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, also prohibits Sims-Crawford from owning and managing a tax return preparation business. Sims-Crawford consented to the order.
According to the government complaint, Sims-Crawford, a Chicago resident who owns and operates KSC Business Support Services, Inc., prepared returns that reported false or inflated claims for the Earned Income Credit, fabricated or inflated business losses, and false rental income and/or expenses. The complaint alleged that these returns fraudulently reduced customers’ reported tax liabilities and helped taxpayers to obtain refunds to which they were not entitled. This conduct allegedly caused the United States hundreds of thousands of dollars in harm.
The IRS has a list of steps on its website that you can take and ten tips for choosing a tax preparer. Each year, the IRS releases the top 12 scams, known as the Dirty Dozen. Return preparer fraud is one of the IRS’s Dirty Dozen Tax Scams for 2018, and taxpayers seeking a return preparer should remain vigilant. The IRS has some information on its website for choosing a return preparer and has launched a free directory of federal tax preparers.
In the past decade, the Tax Division has obtained injunctions against hundreds of unscrupulous tax preparers. Information about these cases is available on the Justice Department’s website. An alphabetical listing of persons enjoined from preparing returns and promoting tax schemes can be found on this page. If you believe that one of the enjoined persons or businesses may be violating an injunction, please contact the Tax Division at tax.mail@usdoj.gov (link sends e-mail) with details.
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