Kansas City Tax Preparer Sentenced for Filing False Tax Returns

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Tanisha Spencer, 35, of Kansas City, Missouri, was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri on May 14, 2026, after pleading guilty to filing false tax returns for multiple clients.

The Department of Justice identified Spencer as a tax preparer who knowingly submitted inaccurate returns that underreported income or inflated deductions for dozens of individual taxpayers. The exact number of returns and total tax loss were not detailed in the charging documents, yet the scope directly affects every client whose return Spencer prepared between 2018 and 2022.

Those taxpayers now face amended filings, potential audits, and repayment obligations that replace the original fraudulent submissions.

The sentence replaces any prior pretrial status with a final judgment that includes prison time, supervised release, and restitution. Restitution payments begin immediately upon release while the IRS gains authority to flag every Social Security number Spencer handled.

The operational change takes effect on the sentencing date of May 14, 2026; amended client returns must be filed within statutory deadlines that now run from that trigger.

Downstream, the IRS Criminal Investigation division must update its case-tracking database to reflect the conviction, which automatically bars Spencer from preparing returns for compensation under IRC Section 280.1. Affected clients receive formal notices requiring them to correct their filings or face separate accuracy-related penalties.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri will next docket the restitution order, after which the Treasury’s Financial Management Service can begin administrative offset of any federal payments owed to Spencer. Parallel enforcement actions against other preparers in the same geographic corridor remain on the DOJ docket.

This sentencing forms part of the Justice Department’s ongoing initiative targeting fraudulent return preparers. The department has secured convictions against multiple Missouri tax professionals in the past 24 months using the same statutes cited in Spencer’s case. The Western District of Missouri federal court handled the plea and sentencing.