What’s your reaction seeing this? I almost had a stroke

Client came to me for tax resolution services. He has a SMLLC and didn't realize that he was required to file FTB 568 for his business in the years (2020-2023) it was inactive. The first thing that was fishy was the call, his current "preparer" does will not file the delinquent 568s but supposedly was current with them. Ok… not to bad… So I did my onboarding, LOE, etc, and he voluntarily uploaded his two years – 24 and 23. The first thing I did was scroll straight to the bottom of the 2023 PDF to see if there was a 568 and there wasn't….

The tax return was strangely malnourished, in the sense that there was missing pages. Lo and behold on the 2023 Schedule 1 line 3 there was a 50k nol but no schedule C.

I checked the 2024 and there was an actual schedule C…. with zero income and the only deduction being the home office deduction…. and line 30 was $81k………………………………

I only see the firm address, EIN, and the name of the firm in the third party preparer section. The preparers name is just the business…. And the address is some virtual office in SF.

Anyway, I am going breaking some bad news here pretty soon… I've only heard of this happening but have never experienced it. Feel free to share the outcomes if you know of any…