JS Roofing’s guilty plea resolved the criminal case against the Fox Island company, but not the amount it must repay. The company pleaded guilty to first-degree theft and filing a fraudulent tax return after failing to remit at least $88,654.62 in sales tax collected from customers between March 2018 and December 2022. Pierce County Superior Court Judge Brian Tollefson sentenced the company on September 9 to no jail time and set a December 9 hearing to finalize restitution, The News Tribune reported. Felony charges against owners Jaime and Sylvia Holguin were dismissed.
The amount established by records may not capture every payment vendors described. The News Tribune reported that Department of Revenue investigators received records from 10 businesses showing $88,654.62 in sales-tax payments to JS Roofing; four other businesses verbally confirmed another $7,461.79 but said they had not kept records. The final restitution figure remained unresolved ahead of the hearing.
Why contractor tax classifications matter
Washington treats retail sales tax collected from customers as funds held in trust for the state, rather than money a business can use for other expenses, according to the Department of Revenue. The agency’s construction guidance also distinguishes retailing from wholesaling: subcontractors may use a reseller permit in qualifying transactions, while the tax treatment depends on the work and the parties’ documentation. Those rules provide context for the case, but do not establish how any particular JS Roofing job should have been classified. Washington’s construction tax matrix explains the distinctions.
The owners’ lawyer, Michael Stewart, described the problem as bookkeeping confusion rather than intentional evasion, according to The News Tribune. The newspaper reported that Sylvia Holguin handled some bookkeeping and filed the company’s monthly income taxes under a wholesale rather than retail category. That account is the defense’s explanation; it does not change the company’s guilty plea or resolve the outstanding restitution amount.
Earlier Washington cases show different outcomes
A 2023 Maple Valley case provides a contrast in who was sentenced: the Department of Revenue said construction-company owner Alejandro Sandoval received two months in jail and was ordered to repay $102,000 after pleading guilty to first-degree theft involving collected sales tax. In the JS Roofing case, by contrast, the company was sentenced and the owners’ felony charges were dismissed. These different resolutions illustrate that prior cases do not establish what drove the outcome in this one. The Department of Revenue’s account of the Sandoval case does not provide a basis for drawing broader conclusions about prosecution patterns.
Other business cases offer additional, but limited, comparisons. In 2018, the Department of Revenue reported that Anacortes-based Main Street Group had pleaded guilty to criminal tax-theft charges over sales tax the agency said was withheld between August 2009 and March 2012. And in 2013, the Attorney General’s Office announced felony charges against Bothell contractor Let Me Paint It, Inc., alleging nearly $23,000 in stolen sales tax and fraudulent returns; that announcement reported charges, not the case’s outcome. The examples differ in location, period, amounts and procedural result, so they are context—not evidence of an enforcement trend. The 2018 Department of Revenue release and the 2013 Attorney General’s Office release describe those cases.
For JS Roofing, the next concrete step is the restitution hearing. The plea and sentence are settled; how much the company must repay remained to be determined.
