Suffolk Restaurant Owners Accused Of Pocketing Food Taxes

WAVY-TV:

A Suffolk restaurant owner is accused of taking the money you pay in food taxes and pocketing it for himself.

The city treasurer tells WAVY.com he went to the two Burger Kings in Suffolk and seized the money in the registers and the safe to pay some of the back taxes.

The owners, Salina and Sarmed Azhar, owe thousands of dollars in back taxes, money customers paid every time they ate at the two Suffolk Burker Kings.

One customer at the drive-thru told WAVY.com, “Oh! My tax dollars went in his pockets? Yeah, lock him up.”

In Suffolk, when you buy a meal at a restaurant, 6.5 percent of your bill goes to paying the city’s meals tax and that money is used to pay for city services, “to pay police officers and firefighters and teachers and run parks and rec facilities and operate schools,” said Ronald Williams, the city treasurer.
He says the Azhar’s have been failing to turn over the revenue from the meals tax, “at least for the last year.”

So, on Monday Williams ordered Sheriff’s deputies to walk into the Burger Kings with a warrant and take all the money they could find to pay at least some of the thousands owed in back taxes.

“We went out and seized the cash that was available at the time,” said Williams. They emptied the registers and the safe.