ATLANTA – The Justice Department is seeking to bar a tax return preparer in Wilkinson County from continuing his business.
A civil complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia alleges that Shondre D. Pitts of Irwinton has a long history of preparing fraudulent tax returns for clients. Pitts has run a company named First Choice Tax Services since 2014.
He is accused of claiming false itemized deductions, false income and business expense deductions, as well as fabricating business losses in order to fraudulently reduce a customer’s liability.
The complaint also accuses Pitts of falsely claiming earned income tax credits, residential energy credits, additional child tax credits, and education credits.
As a result of Pitts’ conduct, his customers may face large income tax debts and be liable for penalties and interest, according to the complaint.
With return preparer fraud numbering among the IRS’ so-called “Dirty Dozen Tax Scams,” the agency advises taxpayers to consult the IRS website for tips on how to choose a tax return preparer. A preparer refusing to sign a tax return is a red flag that should give customers pause.
In the past decade, the IRS Tax Division has obtained injunctions against hundreds of unscrupulous tax preparers.
ATLANTA – A second Republican candidate has entered the race to succeed U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Greensboro, who is leaving Congress to run for Georgia secretary of state.
Mike Collins, a small business owner from Jackson, announced Tuesday that he will seek the Republican nomination in Georgia’s 10th Congressional District in next May’s primary.
Collins is positioning himself as a strong supporter of former President Donald Trump and brings to the race the endorsement of former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia.
“I’m running for Congress because the radical left is out of control,” Collins said. “The liberals in Washington, D.C., won’t stop until someone stands up to them, and for hard-working Georgians.
“I’m pro-Trump, pro-life and will protect our Second Amendment rights. I’m running to fight for the families and small business owners in my community and around the country. I won’t bow to the woke mob’s cancel culture or [Speaker] Nancy Pelosi’s job-killing, gun-grabbing agenda.”
Collins has owned and operated several successful businesses during the last three decades, including a trucking company he has grown from a single truck to a fleet of 115. He is a board member of the Georgia Motor Trucking Association.
Collins graduated from Georgia State University with a business degree.
He joins another businessman, Matt Richards, in the 10th District contest. Richards, a Gwinnett County native who now lives in Barrow County, owns a demolition company.
Like Collins, Richard characterizes himself as a conservative and a political outsider.
The 10th Congressional District covers a large swath of rural areas and small cities between Atlanta and Augusta, including Athens and Milledgeville.
Hice and former Alpharetta Mayor David Belle Isle are challenging incumbent Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was censured by the Georgia GOP at last weekend’s party convention for refusing to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
President Joe Biden carried the Peach State by 11,779 votes, the first Democrat to do so since Bill Clinton in 1992.
Georgia has had 14 congressional districts for the last decade.
ATLANTA – The once-a-decade process of redrawing Georgia’s congressional and legislative district lines is about to begin.
The state House and Senate committees in charge of redistricting will hold a joint virtual town hall meeting next week to start gathering feedback from Georgia residents.
The June 15 meeting, which will run from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m., will be the first chance for citizens to weigh in on the results they would like to see from the process. The committees are expected to hold additional hearings during the next few months across the state.
By law, states must redraw their congressional and legislative district boundaries every 10 years following the U.S. Census. The process is legally necessary only to accommodate population shifts that have occurred within each state since the last census, so that districts remain as nearly equal in population as possible.
But in reality, redistricting is “the most political activity” in America, said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia who has written extensively on the subject.
“The majority party invariably comes up with maps to try to maintain its majority status for the next decade,” Bullock said.
In Georgia’s case, it’s the Republicans who will be looking to retain control of the state House and Senate. It promises to be a challenging task, with demographic changes in the Atlanta suburbs having led to gains by Democrats during the last decade.
The GOP also will have to figure out a way to minimize population losses in rural counties where Republicans dominate.
Democrats also have made progress in Georgia’s congressional delegation since the last census, capturing the 6th Congressional District seat north of Atlanta in 2018 and winning the 7th District seat in Atlanta’s northeastern suburbs last year.
For the first time since the 1980s, Georgia will not be allocated an additional congressional seat. Although the state experienced population growth during the last decade, it wasn’t enough to warrant a 15th U.S. House district.
Republicans currently hold eight of Georgia’s 14 congressional seats to six for the Democrats.
Speakers at next week’s meeting will be limited to two to five minutes each. Time limits within that range will be subject to how many people sign up to speak.
Following the public hearings, lawmakers will design and vote on new maps during a special session of the General Assembly later this year. With final census data not expected before September, the session isn’t expected to begin until October at the earliest.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (right) addresses news conference on a new anti-opioid initiative by CVS. The company’s Tom Moriarty is on the left. (Photo credit: Thomas Hartwell – Marietta Daily Journal
MARIETTA – One of the nation’s leading drug store chains is expanding an initiative aimed at the opioid epidemic in Georgia.
CVS Health announced Monday it has finished installing time-delay safes at all 355 of its Georgia pharmacy locations, including those in Target stores.
The safes, now in use in 18 states and the District of Columbia, have driven significant declines in robberies at CVS pharmacies.
The time-delay function, which cannot be overridden, electronically delays the time it takes for pharmacy employees to open a safe, deterring would-be robbers trying to get in and out of stores as quickly as possible.
“We’ve seen smash-and-grab crimes all over the state,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said Monday during a news conference at a CVS store near Marietta. “We must have innovative solutions in place to stop controlled substances from getting into the wrong hands.”
“The opioid challenge is complicated,” added Tom Moriarty, chief policy officer and general counsel at CVS Health. “But with each resource and partnership, we take another step.”
Moriarty said CVS also has installed nearly 4,000 disposal units for unwanted medicines at its pharmacies across the country, including 135 in Georgia. The company has donated an additional 37 of the units to local police departments across the state.
Together, the Georgia units have collected 63,000 pounds of unwanted and expired medicines.
CVS also provides volunteer pharmacists to teach students about the dangers of misusing prescription drugs. The Pharmacists Teach Program has reached more than 17,000 Georgia students thus far, Moriarty said.
All CVS locations in Georgia with time-delay safes display visible signage to discourage would-be thieves.
ATLANTA – In another sign that the coronavirus pandemic is waning, Georgia Chief Justice Harold Melton announced Friday the statewide judicial emergency he first declared in March of last year is about to end.
Following a meeting with members of the state’s Judicial Council, Melton told judges across the state he does not expect the emergency to extend beyond June 30.
On Monday, when the last of a series of emergency orders Melton has issued expires, he said he plans to issue a formal notice terminating the state of emergency effective at the end of the month.
“We’ve been looking at the trend lines in the governor’s public health emergency orders based on revised CDC guidelines and the decline in COVID-19 rates across the state,” Melton said.
“Because I am doubtful that the governor will continue the public health emergency beyond June 30, 2021, I do not expect to issue another order extending beyond June 30 the statewide judicial emergency that has been in place for nearly 15 months already.”
Melton reiterated previous advice that courts and lawyers across Georgia prepare to operate without a statewide judicial emergency in place.
“It will take hard work, creativity, and cooperation to get our courts back to full operations and to resolve the large backlogs of cases that have accumulated due to the restrictions the pandemic required,” he said.
With the statewide emergency order expiring, the chief judges of Georgia’s 49 superior court judicial circuits will have statutory authority to issue local orders to suspend certain legal deadlines and designate alternative court facilities.
Also, under legislation the General Assembly passed this year, the chief judges of superior and state courts will have authority to grant relief from statutory speedy trial requirements in criminal cases for a limited time based on the circumstances in a particular county.
For their part, judges will control the management and operations of their courts, including access to courthouses and courtrooms, which proceedings will be conducted remotely and which will be in-person, and public health precautions for in-person proceedings such as wearing masks and social distancing.
“I am very proud of how nimble and committed our courts have been throughout the entire pandemic to ensure the public health of all those who come to our courts, while safeguarding the rights of Georgia’s citizens,” Melton said. “Our local courts are equipped and ready to carry the load the rest of the way.”
