Owners of Fox Island roofing company accused of tax fraud, theft by state Attorney General
The owners of a Fox Island roofing company were charged Feb. 27 with felony theft and tax fraud for allegedly keeping at least $88,654.62 of retail-sales taxes collected from customers that should have been remitted to the Department of Revenue.
The state Attorney General’s Office accused Jaime G. Holguin and Sylvia R. Holguin of first-degree theft for failing to remit the funds between 2018 and 2022 while running JS Roofing LLC. Sylvia Holguin, 62, was additionally charged with making a fraudulent statement in a tax return.
According to documents filed in Pierce County Superior Court, the money the married couple are accused of pocketing stems from work their company did as a contractor or subcontractor for 10 businesses. Investigators found invoices and other transactional documents showing the customers paid retail sales tax for the work, but the Attorney General’s Office alleges that the payments were left out of JS Roofing tax returns.
Reached by phone Friday, Jaime Holguin, 63, told The News Tribune he wasn’t aware of the charges but would “fight it.”
Holguin said there had been a misunderstanding with the Department of Revenue. He said he thought taxes were being filed correctly, but as soon as he found out there was a problem, he had been paying the department monthly to correct it.
“It was definitely no intent whatsoever on our part,” Holguin said. “There is a discrepancy which, like I said, is being dealt with.”
An arraignment hearing for the Holguins to enter pleas in the case was set for March 17, court records show. The maximum penalty for first-degree theft is 10 years in prison and/or a $20,000 fine.
An investigator in the Attorney General’s Office’s major economic crimes unit began looking at JS Roofing after the Department of Revenue conducted a routine audit of the business and referred it for criminal investigation. According to the probable cause document, the audit concluded the Holguins significantly underreported their collection of retail sales tax and failed to remit collected funds to the Department of Revenue.
The Holguins appealed the audit in March 2023, records state, specifically disputing an evasion penalty of $133,114.26 for unremitted sales taxes covering 2018 through 2021. But the penalty was upheld.
The Holguins previously owned and operated another business called RoofTech Systems Inc., and Sylvia Holguin filed handwritten tax returns that included both wholesaling and retail sales tax amounts. Investigators wrote that this showed the Holguins were familiar with filing combined excise tax returns that accurately distinguished customer payments that include retail sales tax amounts and wholesaling.
In April last year, letters were sent to business vendors inquiring if they paid sales tax to JS Roofing or used resellers permits, which allows a taxpayer business to purchase components, ingredients or chemicals used to process new products for sale without paying retail sales tax.
At least 14 businesses responded and 10 produced documents showing they paid retail sales tax to JS Roofing that totaled $88,654.62. Four which didn’t retain documents verbally confirmed they paid sales tax amounting to $7,461.79
Further review of JS Roofing’s tax returns by the Attorney General’s Office found that of the 58 returns it filed between January 2018 and November 2022, the Holguins allegedly did not report wholesaling and retail sales tax. Charging documents state that they started reporting both on their tax returns in December 2022, after the audit began.
JS Roofing, which formed in 2017, has previously been penalized for workplace safety violations at job sites in Tacoma, Gig Harbor and Belfair, all of which were corrected during inspections or at later dates, according to the Department of Labor & Industries.
Fines for the violations totaled $42,300 from four inspections done between 2019 and 2024. Six violations were coded as repeat serious violations for not ensuring that appropriate fall protection systems or fall restraint systems were provided and implemented. Another repeat serious violation was assessed in 2024 after six employees were observed using a ladder that wasn’t extended at least three feet above the roof they were accessing.
This story was originally published February 28, 2025 at 2:39 PM.
