TACOMA, Wash. -- A U.S. district court in Tacoma sentenced a chiropractor in Puyallup, Washington., on Monday to three months in prison and seven months in a halfway house for failing to file federal income tax returns, reported the U.S. attorney’s office.

U.S. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle also ordered Kevin Lynn Terry, 45, to file all delinquent tax returns and to pay all remaining taxes due.

Terry used trusts to conceal his chiropractic income and personal assets, including his home, during the years 1996 and 1997.

The IRS audited these two years and found the trusts to be shams.

Terry later agreed to the IRS' tax assessments for those years.

Beginning in 1998, he changed tactics and began to willfully evade the IRS' ability to assess and collect tax for the years 1999 through 2001. This included not filing individual Form 1040 returns.

He also formed a corporation in 1998, named Puyallup Chiropractic Clinic Inc., with himself as president, for which he did not file Corporate 1120 tax returns.

During the subject years of 1999 through 2001, Terry evaded tax of about $70,000.

Before criminal charges were brought, he filed tax returns for the subject years and paid the taxes due.

At sentencing Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle said, "The term tax protestor is merely a polite way of saying tax cheater." The judge stated further that "it's not enough to just pay when you are caught. If being caught results only in having to pay the tax, our system would collapse."

Kenneth J. Hines, the IRS special agent in charge of the Pacific Northwest, said, "During the last three years, over 800 non-filers have learned a hard lesson that cheating the American public can lead to their prosecution."