Today, a former city councilman in Statesboro, Georgia was sentenced to 33 months in jail for avoiding taxes on profits from bars he co-owned.
According to court records and comments made in court, William Britt, now residing in Bluffton, South Carolina, dodged taxes on profits from many clubs he co-owned near Georgia college campuses. Each restaurant was supposedly owned by a single person as part of the programme.
In actuality, Britt was one of a number of business partners that owned the clubs in varied proportions. Britt and the other genuine owners embezzled cash from the businesses and redistributed it according to their ownership percentages without reporting the revenue to the IRS.
Britt personally guaranteed that some of the bars’ nominal owners submitted fake tax returns to complete the fraud plan. Britt also gave fake information to an accountant who submitted tax forms for several of these entities using fraudulent information.
Britt misrepresented the real ownership of the companies, understated the profits of the bars, and concealed financial transfers to the owners. This allowed Britt and the other legitimate bar owners to submit tax returns with the IRS that excluded their whole income tax obligations. Britt stated in his guilty plea that he intentionally underreported his income on his 2014 individual tax return.
In addition to the prison sentence, Chief Judge J. Randal Hall of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia ordered Britt to serve three years of supervised release and pay the United States $352,404.54 in restitution.
The statement was made by Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Tax Division of the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney David H. Estes for the Southern District of Georgia.
The case was investigated by IRS-Criminal Investigation and the FBI.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant Chief David Ziesserson, Trial Attorney Casey S. Smith, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia.