Former IRS supervisor in Philly pleads guilty to cheating on his taxes

The taxman always cometh — even for those who work for him.

On Tuesday, a former supervisor in the IRS’s Philadelphia office pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges, admitting he’d cheated on his taxes for years.

Wayne M. Garvin, a 26-year veteran of the agency, told the court he underreported his income by more than $74,000 while working as a manager in Taxpayer Advocate Service, an IRS branch dedicated to helping taxpayers navigate tax issues.

Little was said about the irony of his situation during a brief court hearing in which U.S. District Judge John Milton Younge walked Garvin through a standard series of questions before accepting his guilty plea.

Prosecutors say Garvin, 57, claimed thousands of dollars in deductions between 2012 and 2016 to which he wasn’t entitled, including tax breaks for charitable contributions to a church he never made, for houses he owned in New Jersey that he falsely claimed as rental properties, and for unreimbursed employment expenses he said he incurred as an Army reservist in a year in which he performed no military work.

When the IRS initiated an audit in 2015, Garvin faked documents in hopes of substantiating those deductions.

“All of these documents were false and fraudulent,” said Melissa S. Siskind of the Justice Department’s Tax Division in court Tuesday. “They were created by the defendant and provided to the IRS in an attempt to avoid the assessment.”

As part of his plea deal, Garvin agreed to pay back the nearly $75,000 he owes and now faces up to five years in prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled in July.

He and his attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment after the hearing.