Federal Court Permanently Bars North Carolina Woman from Preparing Federal Tax Returns for Others

Bryson City, N.C., Resident Must Provide Customer List to Government

WASHINGTON – A federal court has permanently barred Jody S. Ball of Bryson City, N.C., from preparing federal income tax returns for others, the Justice Department announced today. The injunction order, to which Ball consented, was entered by Judge Martin Reidinger of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. The order requires Ball to provide the government with a list of all persons for whom she prepared federal tax returns since January 2007 and to send each person a copy of the court’s order.  

According to the government’s complaint, Ball, doing business as The Tax Lady Inc. and Jody Ball Accounting, included false claims for charitable donation deductions, business expense deductions and earned income tax credits on tax returns that she and her businesses prepared. Even after the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) imposed penalties on Ball in 2004, she allegedly prepared more than 1,600 federal income tax returns during and after 2006. According to the complaint, of those returns that the IRS audited, approximately 80 percent understated customers’ tax liabilities. 

In the past ten years, the Justice Department’s Tax Division has obtained hundreds of injunctions to stop the promotion of tax fraud schemes and the preparation of fraudulent returns. Information about these cases is available on the Justice Department’s website.