Justice Department Sues to Shut Down Houston-Based Tax Return Preparer

The Justice Department filed a civil injunction suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas seeking to permanently bar a Houston-based return preparer from owning or operating a tax return preparation business and preparing tax returns for others.

The complaint alleges that Morshanda Lewis – operating through her business, Taxes R Us – regularly prepared and filed federal income tax returns for her customers on which she knowingly underreported the tax her customers owed, often generating larger refunds than her customers should have obtained. The complaint offers several examples of how, from 2020 to 2023, Lewis prepared hundreds of returns for tax years 2019 through 2022 that claimed residential energy credits or education credits to which she knew or should have known her customers were not entitled. The United States contends Lewis continued to prepare tax returns that claimed false credits despite several warnings from the IRS as early as November 2013 that many of the returns she prepared contained apparent errors. 

According to the complaint, Lewis’ false residential energy credit and false education credit schemes for tax years 2019 to 2021, alone, caused significant loss in tax revenue, estimated to exceed $1 million.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General David A. Hubbert of the Justice Department’s Tax Division made the announcement.

Taxpayers seeking a return preparer should remain vigilant against unscrupulous tax preparers. The IRS has information on its website for choosing a tax return preparer and has launched a free directory of federal tax preparers. The IRS also offers 10 tips to avoid tax season fraud and ways to safeguard their personal information.

In the past decade, the Justice Department’s Tax Division has obtained injunctions against hundreds of unscrupulous tax preparers. Information about these cases is available on the Justice Department’s website. An alphabetical listing of persons enjoined from preparing returns and promoting tax schemes can be found on this page. If you believe that one of the enjoined persons or businesses may be violating an injunction, please contact the Tax Division with details.