MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A couple went to pick up their tax refund last week, but ended up in handcuffs.
Cell phone video from February 27 shows police outside Tax Authority on Getwell. They’re struggling to arrest a man before clamping the cuffs on his wife, Dollie Brown.
Police said the couple was refusing the leave the business after being asked to repeatedly and that they were hurling foul language at officers.
“I mean, we was mad. I mean, we was going back and forth,” said Brown.
Brown said they were mad because of what happened inside the tax preparation business.
She said she went in to pick up her tax refund while her husband waited outside. But Brown nearly did a double take when she saw her check was only for a little over $2,000. She said she was expecting something in the realm of $3,000.
“It wasn’t the right amount that they told me so I asked them can they give me — give me the information and I’m gonna take it in my hand, call the IRS. She wouldn’t give me no information,” Brown said.
A manager at Tax Authority told WREG she couldn’t discuss specific figures due to client confidentiality, but said Brown’s numbers were incorrect. She also said that anytime a customer wants their tax paperwork, they always give it to them.
The Memphis chapter of the Better Business Bureau told WREG they have only received one complaint about Tax Authority. It’s from a different woman claiming the company wouldn’t hand over her paperwork.
Tax Authority’s manager said the company provides customers their tax refunds minus fees, which she said are agreed to in advance. (Brown claims the fee she was quoted is only about a third of the amount that she says was missing from her refund, but Tax Authority refutes this).
An argument ensued, Brown said, and then police showed up.
“I mean, I was angry and I was like, ‘This is messed up,’ you know. I wasn’t a threat,” Brown said.
Tax Authority said they didn’t know who called police, but that it wasn’t anyone on their staff.
Once police arrived, they said they asked Brown and her husband to leave the premises at least a dozen times.
When the couple wouldn’t go, police said they arrested Brown’s husband, Marcus Clark, on charges of disorderly conduct, resisting official detention and criminal trespass. Brown said she was issued a citation for trespassing.
“It’s messed up how they treated him basically because we have a freedom of speech and how this company did us, that’s not right,” Brown said.
Tax Authority would tell you they only treated the couple fairly and honestly — like every other customer.
An IRS spokeswoman told WREG the agency was legally barred from discussing individual cases.