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View Winners → Operator of Covina staffing company pleads guilty to tax charge
San Gabriel Valley Dec 15, 2022
| Image courtesy of the IRS/Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
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A Diamond Bar man pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal charge for deliberately failing to pay more than $200,000 for one three-month period’s payroll tax obligations owed by a San Gabriel Valley employment staffing company.
Robinson Rin Yang, 54, pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court to one count of willful failure to pay over employment taxes. Sentencing was set for Feb. 27, at which time Yang will face up to five years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
From March 2016 to March 2020, Yang operated B&S Staffing, a Covina-based staffing service business. From mid-2017 until the end of 2019, B&S accrued large unpaid employment tax liabilities, failed to make timely employment tax deposits, and repeatedly failed to timely file quarterly employment tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service.
B&S did not file — until February 2019 — employment tax returns for the periods ending June 30, 2017 through December 31, 2018, prosecutors said.
After the returns were filed, B&S again fell into non-compliance with its reporting obligations. B&S did not file — until September 2020 — employment tax returns for the quarterly tax periods ending March 31, 2019, through December 31, 2019.
Yang admitted he was aware of B&S’ tax situation, but willfully failed to pay over to the IRS all the employment taxes due and owing, including income taxes and Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld from employee wages. Instead, Yang repeatedly used his control over B&S to direct payments from the corporate bank account, which he controlled, for his personal benefit.
For example, in July 2018, for the quarterly tax period ending on June 30, 2018, Yang willfully failed to account for and pay over about $221,108 in B&S payroll taxes.
In total, B&S accrued roughly $2,791,783 in unpaid employment taxes during this 2 1/2-year period. Yang has agreed to pay this amount in restitution to the IRS, court papers show.
Federal prosecutors said that despite the fact Yang earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from his operation of B&S during each of the calendar years 2017 through 2019, he failed to timely file federal income tax returns for those years.
