Charge: Kentucky man told IRS he was a certified public accountant but wasn’t.
A Clay County man convicted in a tax-fraud case involving a Tennessee lawmaker faces new charges of claiming to be a certified public accountant after his license was revoked.
A federal grand jury indicted Charles Marshall Stivers Thursday on charges of putting false information in a document he submitted to the Internal Revenue Service.
Stivers, of Manchester, was licensed as a CPA in Kentucky in 1989, but in October 2015, the State Board of Accountancy permanently revoked his license, according to the indictment.
The order by the board barred Stivers from ever again representing himself as a CPA.
However, in March 2016, Stivers signed a document saying he had authority to represent a Mexican restaurant in Manchester in a tax case before the IRS, according to the indictment.
The license number Stivers put on the document was actually the one issued to his son, the indictment charged.
Stivers knew he wasn’t authorized to practice as a CPA at the time and that the license number he used was not his, the indictment said.
Stivers lost his license after pleading guilty in 2015 in a federal case in Tennessee involving Joseph E. Armstrong, a member of the state House of Representatives.
Federal authorities charged that Armstrong bought cigarette tax stamps from a tobacco wholesaler at 20 cents apiece, knowing that the legislature planned to increase the tax, and then sold the stamps after voting for the higher tax.
The legislature upped the tax to 62 cents apiece. Armstrong made $500,000 selling the tax stamps at the higher price, Stivers said in a court document.
Stivers, who was Armstrong’s accountant, said in a court document that he agreed to run the profits through his investment company and write checks back to Armstrong in order to try to hide the sales.
Stivers said in his plea that he kept 15 percent of the profits, and did not include the profits from the deal on Armstrong’s 2008 taxes at the legislator’s direction.
Stivers pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the U.S. He was sentenced to two years on probation and ordered to pay $19,787 in restitution.
Armstrong, of Knoxville, denied the charges, saying he had relied on Stivers to prepare his taxes correctly.
Jurors acquitted Armstrong on charges of conspiracy and attempting to evade taxes, but convicted him on a charge of filing a false return.
A judge sentenced him to three years on probation, fined him $40,000 and ordered restitution to the IRS of “99,943, according to the court file.
The new charges against Stivers have maximum sentences of five years if he is convicted.
Stivers also faces theft charges in Clay County in an unrelated case.
This story was originally published March 19, 2021 at 10:59 AM.
