Tax Jam: Landscaper Digs Himself a Hole & Ends Up in the “Yard”
McCauley Law Offices can help you out of your Tax Jam, just give us a call for a FREE consultation to get started! When the IRS knocks, let us answer. Don’t let the let your issue with the IRS pile up on you like leaves in the fall. We can help you and you will breathe easier with our team on your side. Our cautionary tale today is about a landscaper who dug himself a whole and ended up in the yard, the prison yard that is.
Owner and operator Scott Herzog of Herzog Landscape Solutions was found guilty of filing a false tax return. Herzog failed to report more than 1.5 million dollars in income from his landscaping business.
Herzog had a gross income of 4.1 million dollars between 2016 and 2018. He had a bookkeeper and an accountant and provided them both with only a partial record of customer payments. He regularly asked customers to pay him with checks or money orders made out to him instead of the business. Herzog would then either cashed the checks or deposited them into accounts not affiliated with the business.
In 2016 Herzog received 1.1 million dollars in payments from customers but only deposited $749,041 into the business bank account. He cashed $107,460 and deposited $133,971 into personal bank accounts.
He was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, ordered to pay a $100,000 fine and $499,958 in restitution to the IRS.
