A Great Falls man pleaded guilty on Friday (March 15) to failing to pay $1.8 million to the Internal Revenue Service.
Rick Tariq Rahim, 55, owned and operated several businesses, including laser tag facilities, and he worked as an Amazon reseller, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Virginia.
(Updated at 2:40 p.m.) Vienna officials have released a proposed budget that maintains the town’s current real estate tax rate, despite continued economic challenges from inflation and supply chain issues.
The $53.8 million budget for fiscal year 2025, which starts July 1, holds the tax rate at $0.1950 per $100 of assessed value. Combined with a cumulative 3-cent reduction over the previous three years, the town will have cut its tax rate by 14% since 2021, Town Manager Mercury Payton said in a message to Mayor Linda Colbert and the town council.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has advanced a proposal for a 4-cent real estate tax increase, which would mark the first hike in six years, if approved.
Yesterday (Tuesday), the board gave County Executive Bryan Hill the green light to advertise the fiscal year 2025 proposed budget and schedule a public hearing starting Tuesday, April 16, at 3 p.m.
As anticipated, Fairfax County is looking at a tight budget for the coming year that will once again lean primarily on residential property owners to offset a declining commercial tax base.
County Executive Bryan Hill has proposed a 4-cent increase in the real estate tax rate, even as he presented an advertised fiscal year 2025 budget to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors yesterday (Tuesday) that largely limits spending to obligations like public schools and employee compensation.
At the halfway point of his administration, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin unveiled a budget proposal that calls for significant income tax cuts, increases in state sales and use tax — and a push to get rid of the car tax, which the Republican called “the single most hated tax” in Virginia.
“The car tax belongs in the trash can and not in your mailbox,” he said.
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).
