The owner of the shuttered Germantown business
Naik Consulting has plead guilty to filing a false tax return, which caused the IRS lo lose approximately $277,257 in taxes, according to a press release from the United States Attorney's Office.
Last October,
Vikram Naik was originally charged with three counts of filing a false tax return. As part of his plea agreement, Naik has plead guilty to one of the three charges.
According to an indictment in the case, Naik filed false individual income tax returns (Forms 1040) for the years 2017, 2018, and 2019. Naik had federal income tax withholding amounts that were less than what he reported on each of the returns he filed with the IRS and, as a result, he had taxable income and total tax owed greater than he reported.
Naik was an information technology consultant who owned and operated Naik Consulting since 2015. Naik provided IT consulting services to some clients who treated him as an employee, paid him wages, and provided annual W-2 forms. Other clients treated Naik as a contractor and paid NCI for Naik's consulting work. Naik was NCI’s only employee, and he issued himself a W-2 from NCI.
From 2016 through 2019, Naik inflated the federal tax withholdings on his 1040 forms. He falsely reported on his W-2s that his company withheld $60,000 in federal income tax from his wages in 2017, $61,500 in 2018, and $146,000 in 2019.
NCI never paid the IRS any federal income taxes from Naik’s wages. He did the same with some of his consulting clients in 2018 and 2019, as well as his wife’s employer in 2018, inflating the federal income tax withheld. Due to the false withholding, his 1040 forms claimed that he did not owe any taxes and instead was entitled to sizable refunds for each of those years.
Sentencing is scheduled for March 21. At sentencing, Naik faces up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He also faces a term of supervised release after completing any period of imprisonment.
