Now That’s a Bozo Tax Preparer

I’ve read about all sorts of Bozo tax preparers, but Sunita Buddhu is by far one of the worst I’ve read about. Luckily for you and I, her days of preparing tax returns have ended.

Ms. Buddhu and her father, Deowraj Buddhu, began preparing tax returns in 2003 as Paradise Consulting Services. The name was later changed to Lotus Consulting. No matter what the name, they used methods that are guaranteed to cause problems: They invented business losses for taxpayers who weren’t self-employed. When the IRS looked at returns from 2003 – 2005 they found that most contained such phony losses.

So the IRS began examining lots of returns, and Ms. Buddhu decided on a new strategy. She had her clients’ returns amended, and changed the business losses to employee business expenses. And then there’s the following, courtesy of the Hartford Courant:

[Judge] Droney said Sunita Buddhu told her clients they had nothing to fear from the IRS because the federal government does not have authorization or jurisdiction to conduct examinations of Connecticut residents’ tax returns. Sunita Buddhu also prepared letters for her clients to submit to the IRS making that claim.

Needless to say, the last time I checked Connecticut was part of the United States….And the Buddhus made the same argument in court last week; the judge responded that the argument wasn’t worth a response.

So the judge has barred Sunita Buddhu from preparing tax returns, and from promoting tax fraud schemes. Unfortunately, over the last few years they prepared thousands of returns. If you happened to use the Buddhus to prepare your return you will likely find yourself a recipient of a “Dear Valued Taxpayer” letter. At least it does appear that the clients weren’t complicit in the fraud.

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