The Justice Department has filed a suit asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to permanently bar a pair of South Florida tax preparers who allegedly have been fabricating deductions and credits.
The DOJ wants to stop Abelardo Ernest Cruz, Ruth Real and their companies, Nations Business Center, Nations Tax Service and Ruth Real Associates, from preparing tax returns. The IRS examined the returns prepared by the two practitioners for tax years 2003 and 2004, and allegedly discovered fabricated depreciation deductions, unsubstantiated casualty losses and overstated employee business expenses.
The government said that Real purported to represent her clients during the IRS audit process, even though she wasn't authorized to do so, and that her behavior and tactics were designed to obstruct the audit process.
The government estimates that the defendants' alleged tax fraud schemes understated their clients' tax liabilities by more than $55 million for returns prepared in 2003 and 2004.
