Portland, OR. — A Happy Valley tree removal business owner was sentenced Thursday to 15 months in federal prison for willfully failing to pay over employment taxes withheld from her employees to the Internal Revenue Service.
Joyce Leard, 47, owner and operator of Mr. Tree Inc., was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $2,880,346.25 in restitution, along with a $100 special assessment.
According to court documents, from approximately 2017 through 2024, Leard operated Mr. Tree Inc., a company providing tree removal and landscaping services that employed between 50 and 75 workers annually and advertised more than 30 years in business.
As the company’s owner, Leard was responsible for withholding Social Security, Medicare and federal income taxes from employee wages and remitting those funds to the IRS, as well as filing quarterly employment tax returns.
Prosecutors said that from the fourth quarter of 2018 through the fourth quarter of 2020, Leard withheld taxes from employees’ paychecks but failed to remit the funds to the IRS or file the required quarterly returns. Instead, she used money from the company’s business accounts to pay other expenses and creditors and purchased approximately $3.5 million in real estate.
During the same period, Mr. Tree Inc. did not file a corporate tax return, and Leard failed to file personal income tax returns for 2018 through 2020, as required by law. Authorities said the conduct resulted in a total tax loss exceeding $3.5 million.
On Jan. 14, 2025, a federal grand jury in Portland returned a 12-count indictment charging Leard with willful failure to account for and pay over tax and willful failure to file a return. She pleaded guilty on June 16, 2025, to one count of willful failure to account for and pay over tax.
The case was investigated by IRS Criminal Investigation and prosecuted by trial attorneys J. Parker Gochenour and Megan E. Wessel of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division Tax Section, with support from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon.
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