The man behind Divan in McLean has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for failing to pay taxes and stealing COVID-19 relief funds — including money used to establish the Persian restaurant.
Gholam “Tony” Kowkabi, 63, of Vienna was sentenced by a federal judge on Monday (Dec. 18) to 57 months in prison after pleading guilty on Aug. 14, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of D.C. announced.
Democrats are again pushing for legislation that would allow local governments to hold referenda on increasing their sales and use tax to pay for school capital projects such as construction and renovations.
The party hopes the effort, which has been tried twice before but defeated by Republicans, will be successful now that Democrats are set to control both the House of Delegates and the Senate following the November elections.
Anticipating slow growth in the real estate tax base and only a modest increase in general fund revenues, local officials are preparing for a slim budget in the next fiscal year.
At a joint meeting on Tuesday (Nov. 28), the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and the school board got an early forecast of projected revenues, expenditures and general priorities for the county government and public school system’s fiscal year 2025 budgets.
A 58-year-old tax preparer from Mount Vernon was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week for filing fake tax returns for his “unsuspecting” clients, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Lawrence Appiah-Osei pleaded guilty in June to operating the scheme from 2017 to 2020 from his Mount Vernon home, defrauding the U.S. government of more than $1.4 million, according to a release published Friday (Nov. 3) by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
A Vienna couple who own multiple restaurants in the D.C. area, including Divan in McLean, pleaded guilty in federal court earlier this week to evading over $1 million in taxes and stealing COVID-19 relief funds.
As part of the plea agreement, Gholam Kowkabi, 63, and Karen Kowkabi, 64, will give the IRS the $1.35 million that they failed to pay in taxes related to their D.C. restaurants Ristorante Piccolo, Catch 15 and Tuscana West, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. announced on Monday (Aug. 14).
The American tax system may finally get dragged into the modern world, with an assist from a federal contractor based in Tysons.
Maximus has signed an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service to participate in a $2.6 billion push to modernize the agency’s computer systems and databases, the government services company announced yesterday.
(Updated at 3 p.m.) The Herndon Town Council voted unanimously this week to reduce the town’s real estate tax rate for the first time in more than a decade.
At a meeting on Tuesday (May 9), the council approved a decrease of the rate from $0.265 per $100 of assessed real estate property value to $0.260 per $100 of assessed value.
With over $110 million in unallocated funds to work with, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors moved yesterday (Tuesday) to address employee compensation, tax relief and other priorities.
As approved by the board 9-1, nearly all of that available money will go toward reducing the real estate tax rate by 1.5 cents and fully funding salary market rate adjustments for county employees — items totaling $47 million and $54.9 million, respectively.
The Town of Vienna will reduce its real estate tax rate by a full cent for the upcoming fiscal year 2024, which begins July 1.
Approved unanimously by the town council on Monday (April 24), the reduction is bigger than the quarter-cent decrease first proposed by Town Manager Mercury Payton last month, but it still won’t be enough to completely counterbalance the rising property values most homeowners experienced this year.
Fairfax County is currently set to keep its real estate tax rate the same as last year, but some local residents accused county leadership of trying to disguise a tax hike for local residents.
During a meeting on Tuesday (April 11), the Board of Supervisors held a public hearing for the fiscal year 2024 tax rate, which is likely to hold steady at $1.11 per $100 of assessed value.
