PHOENIX — An Arizona business owner has been ordered to pay more than $1 million in restitution after being sentenced this week in a tax evasion case, court documents show.
Gary Clinton Mecham, a San Tan Valley resident, was sentenced in U.S. District Court on Feb. 9 after previously pleading guilty to tax evasion last November.
Mecham has owned several professional employer organizations (PEOs) since the mid-1980s, including operating Icon Employer Services Inc. in 2013 and early 2014. The company provided outsourced employee benefits to clients, including collection of federal taxes on their behalf to submit to the Internal Revenue Service.
In Mecham’s indictment filing, authorities alleged that Mecham filed clients’ tax returns in 2013 and early 2014 but only paid a small portion of the withholding and FICA taxes to the IRS, and also understated the companies’ employee wages while failing to file W-2 reports to the Social Security Administration.
Read more of this story from the Phoenix Business Journal.
