The first-time home-buyer credit has already yielded a prosecution for false tax filing, and the IRS is issuing a warning that it won’t go easy on fraud.
The Internal Revenue Service said it has executed seven search warrants and has 24 criminal investigations under way involving the credit.
“The agency has a number of sophisticated computer screening tools to quickly identify returns that may contain fraudulent claims for the first-time home-buyer credit,” the tax-collecting department said.
On July 23, a Jacksonville, Fla.-tax preparer, James Otto Price III, pleaded guilty to falsely claiming the first-time home-buyer credit on a client’s federal tax return. He’d been indicted on 35 tax-fraud counts, 15 of which involved the 2008 first-time home-buying credit. The others also included claiming various tax credits.
According …
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