Years of fraud by a Griffin tax return preparer has likely cost the federal government millions of dollars in overpayments to her customers, the U.S. Department of Justice says in a new lawsuit seeking to put her out of business.
The complaint, filed Friday on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service, asks a Georgia federal judge to block Tanja Hollis and her company, Tanja Tax Preparations, from helping others prepare federal tax returns. It says Hollis, based in Spalding County, has been in business since at least 2014.
Of the 47 Hollis-prepared tax returns the federal government examined as part of its investigation, 43 contained false claims, according to the lawsuit. It alleges Hollis prepared and filed just over 5,000 tax returns for the 2019 to 2024 processing years, of which 98% claimed refunds and 83% claimed earned income tax credits.
“Based on the returns that it has examined, the United States has likely lost millions of dollars in tax revenue each year from Ms. Hollis’s consistent understatement of liabilities and overstatement of refunds,” the lawsuit says.
Hollis did not immediately respond to phone, email and social media messages. There was no mention of the lawsuit on her public Instagram and Facebook accounts Monday, when the public case record showed nothing had been filed yet on her behalf.
The DOJ said in a press release Friday that Hollis routinely understated her customers’ tax liabilities by reporting false or exaggerated business expenses and claiming tax credits for false education expenses.
“Hollis prepared returns claiming business expenses for customers who did not own or operate a business and education expenses for customers who were not enrolled as students,” the DOJ said. “The IRS interviewed Tanja Tax Preparations customers who said they did not give Hollis any reason to believe that the items reported on their returns were legitimate.”
The lawsuit seeks to recoup all fees Hollis and her company received from customers for preparing fraudulent tax returns.
Hollis typically charged between $175 and $500 per return, the government alleged.
IRS employees interviewed the customers behind the 47 tax returns examined, according to the complaint. Some of the customers said Hollis knew she was committing fraud, the lawsuit alleges.
“Many also explained that they did not know about the businesses or expenses claimed on their returns or that they did not provide Ms. Hollis with the amounts of expenses claimed on their returns,” the lawsuit says.
The 43 returns found to be fraudulent caused the federal government to pay Hollis’ customers $208,711, the DOJ said.
Hollis did not respond to an IRS agent’s attempts to contact her and failed to provide records supporting the claims she included in customers’ tax returns, the DOJ said. It said she was made to pay $39,500 in 2016 and almost $24,000 in 2018 for failing to meet requirements as a tax return preparer.
“The penalties did not deter Ms. Hollis’s fraudulent conduct,” the complaint says.
The DOJ said Hollis’ fraud has harmed her customers who paid substantial fees for what they believed to be honest tax return preparation, only to learn they owe money to the IRS.
The DOJ publishes a list of people barred from preparing tax returns and promoting tax schemes on its tax division webpage.
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