The owner of a South Florida tax preparation business has been sentenced to nearly five years in federal prison and one year of supervised release after pleading guilty to aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns. She was also ordered to pay over $20 million in restitution to the IRS.
Beatriz Toledo, 61, owned Immigration and Tax Service Group LLC. For tax years 2017 through 2021, Toledo, through her company, willfully prepared false and fraudulent tax returns for clients. These false returns included:
- False claims for the Residential Energy Credit
- False itemized deductions for state and local sales taxes
- False business expenses
These fraudulent claims artificially decreased her clients’ taxable income, resulting in larger tax refunds.
Toledo’s scheme involved submitting approximately 7,800 tax returns with fraudulent claims for residential energy tax credits, leading to an estimated underpayment of $20 million in federal taxes by her clients. Toledo’s company received approximately $7.1 million in tax preparation fees, which were taken directly from clients’ refund checks…