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Posted: 9:35 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012

Husband, wife convicted in tax scheme

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By Angel K. Brooks

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

They claimed they were “American citizens,” not United States citizens. They claimed they were not subject to the federal income tax laws. They claimed paying income tax was voluntary.

Now a Lawrenceville couple has been convicted for a tax defiance scheme, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday.

Stephen Paul Thomas, 46, and Patricia Denese Anderson, 51, were found guilty by a federal jury of conspiring to defraud the United States and making false claims upon the Internal Revenue Service by a federal jury after a six-day trial, the news release stated.

According to the information presented in court, Thomas and Anderson, who owned a yard furnishing store and general contracting business in Duluth, conspired to avoid taxes from 1999 to 2009 and submitted false claims for refunds.

The couple stopped filing federal income tax returns in the 1990s, then hired the now-defunct American Rights Litigators to fight the IRS on their behalf, prosecutors said. ARL sold and promoted tax defiance schemes, authorities said.

“For over a decade, Stephen Thomas and Patricia Denese Anderson waged a campaign of obstruction against the IRS, culminating in filing false tax returns claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in false refunds,” U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said in the release.

The husband and wife’s ploys to avoid taxes included sending “obstructive, frivolous and harassing documents” to the IRS and Department of Treasury and establishing business bank accounts using fake tax identification numbers to hide money, authorities said.

In 2009, the couple submitted two fraudulent tax returns claiming more than $420,000 in refunds. They also sent the government a bogus $100 billion, private registered bond to pay off their debts, prosecutors said.

They were indicted in April.

Thomas and Anderson could be sentenced to up to five years in prison on each charge and fined up to $250,0o0. They are scheduled to be sentenced in January.

[webhick]

I love how the article keeps using the phrase "avoid taxes," when it's clear that these folks weren't avoiding - they were trying to reverse.

[Mider]

This story didn't even make the front page of the Metro section here in Atlanta, it was placed in news summary scetion.
There seems to be a lot more people having "come to Jesus" meetings with the IRS, especially in Atlanta, I work in a small CPA firm, but we are averaging one a week who have tried some scheme in the past and have now been given one more chance, we are constantly telling them to cut the crap if they want to continue to see the world from this side of the bars.

[The Observer]

The Atlanta Journal & Constitution is reporting as of yesterday that:

[a] federal judge sentenced Stephen Paul Thomas, 46, to five years and Patricia Denese Anderson, 51, to four years and three months for their parts in the tax-defiance scheme...

[notorial dissent]

Mider, welcome to Quatloos. Just out of curiosity, how many of them actually smell the coffee, and get back with reality?

[Mider]

Actually we have had a few in 2013, something about seeing people in the news actually going to jail or losing their homes to satisfy liens, kinda brings people back to reality.

[The Observer]

Reality does work for some of the protestors/deniers out there, especially when it comes in the form of biting them in the pocketbook. Like the former TP that I talked to who had participated in claiming 99 exemptions on his W-4 with his employer and getting socked with $500 penalties for a couple of years. Even, though this guy by even the most generous of standards could not be considered functionally literate, he recognized that he couldn't keep this kind of game up on his blue-collar salary and came in from the cold.

[Quixote]

I wish reality always had that effect. I'm dealing with a couple each of whom has over $100,000 in frivolous filing penalties. I suggested the frivolous penalty amnesty route, but they have refused to budge. The wife was in tears about having to live off the charity of relatives, but can't admit to herself that all of her current tax related problems are self inflicted. She is still angry about the ill advised actions of a tax auditor and an Exam group manager 15 years ago.