BATON ROUGE – At the request of the Louisiana Department of Revenue (LDR), a New Orleans judge barred the former owner of a chain of tax preparation businesses, who'd been convicted of tax-related felonies, from working as a Louisiana tax preparer.

Judge Ellen M. Hazeur, of the Orleans Parish Civil District Court, permanently blocked Leroi Gorman Jackson from “directly or indirectly acting as a Louisiana tax preparer, or filing, assisting in, or directing the preparation or filing” of any Louisiana tax returns other than his own.

Jackson, the owner of Taxman Financial Services, LLC, was arrested in 2017 for submitting income tax returns on behalf of his clients that contained phony business losses and resulted in $20,000 in fraudulent tax refunds; and for withholding an estimated $21,891 in payroll taxes from his employees’ paychecks, but failing to remit the withheld taxes to the state. 

He pleaded guilty to a felony charge of Filing False Public Records. Jackson pleaded guilty to a similar scheme in 2014.

In addition to the criminal charges, LDR litigators brought a civil case against Jackson seeking to bar him from working as a tax preparer in Louisiana.

Secretary of Revenue, Kimberly Lewis Robinson, commented on the situation, stating, “Our goals with these civil cases are to protect taxpayers and to send a clear message that the State of Louisiana will not tolerate tax preparer fraud."

Jackson is the second tax preparer barred from preparing returns under Act 526 of the 2018 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature, which authorizes the Department of Revenue to bring lawsuits against tax preparers who engage in fraudulent activity such as submitting false tax returns.