Orlando, Florida – U.S. District Choose Wendy W. Berger today sentenced Joseph Amaya to 12 months in federal jail for aiding and aiding in the preparation of untrue tax returns. The court docket also ordered Amaya to pay back extra than $1.6 million in restitution to the Interior Profits Support. 

Amaya experienced pleaded guilty on February 16, 2021. 

In accordance to courtroom documents, from 2014 by way of somewhere around 2018, Amaya co-owned and managed Tax Machine, Inc., a tax planning company in Kissimmee. Through the existence of the small business, Amaya knowingly organized and filed—and experienced his workforce to put together and file—numerous false and fraudulent tax returns on behalf of Tax Equipment clients. Precisely, Amaya and his personnel made bogus bills or deliberately overstated correct deductible charges (these kinds of as unreimbursed employee bills, gas, mileage, professional medical and dental expenses, and presents to charity). Amaya also educated his workforce to include things like bogus promises of web company losses on tax returns. By which includes people false and fraudulent material statements on the earnings tax returns of Tax Machine shoppers, Amaya and his employees removed specified tax liabilities that their consumers in any other case would have had, generated tax refunds that they were being not entitled to, or did both equally. The tax loss to the IRS as a consequence of Amaya’s conduct is close to $1.6 million.

“When Joseph Amaya used his tax return preparation assistance, Tax Machine, Inc., to try and make a rapid buck for him and his consumers, he underestimated the particular agents of IRS Felony Investigation,” mentioned Specific Agent in Charge Brian Payne of IRS Legal Investigation. “At the IRS, safeguarding taxpayer dollars is a make a difference we choose significantly. An integral part of the agency’s mission will involve detecting and catching fraudulent tax refund promises. Taxpayers on the lookout for tax preparing info are encouraged to pay a visit to IRS.gov.”

This scenario was investigated by the Internal Revenue Services-Prison Investigation. It is staying prosecuted by Assistant United States Lawyer Emily C. L. Chang.