The Justice Department announced today that it has sued two Dallas tax return preparers, seeking to bar them from preparing federal tax returns for others. The civil injunction suit alleges that Ricardo Solomon and Leslie Mosley, who operate a business called Trini Tax, claim false deductions and credits on customers’ federal tax returns.

According to the government complaint, Solomon and Mosley included fabricated claims for federal fuel tax credit and for education tax credits on tax returns that they prepared. The complaint alleges that Solomon and Mosley’s false claims for federal fuel tax credits have appeared on at least 187 tax returns, and claimed at least $700,000 for the year 2011 alone. The complaint alleges that Solomon prepared a 2010 tax return for one customer that claimed false fuel tax credits for purported fuel purchases that would have cost the customer far more than she reported receiving in income that year.

Fraudulently claiming expenses in order to secure larger refundable credits, including the fuel tax credit, is one of the Internal Revenue Service’s Dirty Dozen tax scams for 2012.   The federal fuel tax credit is available only to taxpayers who operate farm equipment or off-highway business vehicles.  

The complaint further alleges that Solomon and Mosley repeatedly prepared tax returns that falsely claimed their customers were entitled to an education tax credit, although they did not attend an accredited post-secondary educational institution at any point during the tax year.

 In the past decade the Justice Department’s Tax Division has obtained injunctions against hundreds of tax-return preparers and tax-fraud promoters. Information about these cases is available on the Justice Department website at www.justice.gov/tax/taxpress2012.htm .