Tax Guru – Ker$tetter Letter

Since they cater to a completely different kind of clientele than we work with, I haven’t made much effort to keep up with the latest workings of the big assembly line tax prep services.

While the long held stereotype for H&R Block has been that they don’t work as hard to use all of the tricks of the trade to legally minimize taxes for their clients, I had no idea that the guys who pay people to stand on street corners in Statue of Liberty costumes have had an established corporate culture of preparing fraudulent tax returns, as described in this recent news release from the U.S. Dept of Justice:

Justice Department Announces Settlement With Liberty Tax Service

With this heavy scrutiny on their tax prep practices, we can only guess as to how much longer they can stay in business.

It will also be very interesting to see if any of the other big assembly line tax prep services mention these legal problems that Liberty has been having in their ads.  That market is very competitive, so it is entirely possible that one or more of the other companies will contrast themselves as being free of this kind of scandal and government investigation.