FEDERAL COURT IN SEATTLE BARS SALE OF FALSE TAX ARGUMENTS

Tacoma Man Sold Tax-Fraud Schemes on Internet

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Justice Department announced today that a federal court in Seattle has barred Jack Cohen of Tacoma, Washington from promoting several tax schemes that he sold on the Internet. In entering the permanent injunction order, U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman found that Cohen falsely promoted the idea that paying taxes is voluntary. Court filings also showed that Cohen sold materials that falsely stated that only income from foreign sources must be reported on federal income tax returns.

“The IRS and Justice Department are committed to rooting out tax-fraud scams that force law-abiding taxpayers to pick up the tab for people who fail to pay what the law requires,” said Eileen J. O’Connor, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Tax Division. She thanked Robert Metcalfe, a Tax Division trial attorney who handled this case, and Sean Flannery, the agent of the IRS Small Business/Self Employed Division who investigated it.

The court also ordered Cohen to provide the government his customers’ names, addresses, and Social Security numbers, to notify his customers about the injunction, and to post a copy of the injunction on his website.

More information about the case is available at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/prtax/txdv04356.htm and http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/prtax/txdv04092.htm. Information about the Justice Department’s efforts against tax-scam promoters is available at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/taxpress2005.htm. Information about the Justice Department’s Tax Division is available at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/index.html.