COEUR d'ALENE - A U.S. Bankruptcy Court trustee and the Department of Justice on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service filed criminal complaints last month against former state Rep. Phil Hart.

Hart fired back last week with a court filing of his own, claiming the allegations against him were untrue and exaggerated.

The complaints filed by the feds allege that Hart made false and fraudulent statements in his Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings earlier this year by not truthfully disclosing his financial situation and income.

They also allege he concealed the ownership of his home and either concealed or failed to maintain records concerning tax deductions he claimed.

They asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court not to discharge any back taxes the former legislator owes from the period of 1996 through 2011.

He allegedly owes the IRS $564,000 - an amount Hart contends in his court filings is exaggerated.

Earlier in June, U.S District Court Judge Edward Lodge ruled that a trust bearing the name of Hart's daughter was not the legal owner of Hart's $203,000 home. It was, in fact, Hart's home.

Lodge also ruled that many of Hart's tax deduction claims were not adequately proven and denied him the opportunity to amend his returns to reflect a lower amount of back taxes owed.

While the IRS was seeking a judgment to foreclose on Hart's home, Lodge stopped short of allowing that, explaining sale of the property would not be prudent until the courts sort out exactly how much tax liability Hart actually has.

After that ruling, the IRS and acting bankruptcy trustee provided evidence to the court of several bank deposits that Hart had made, but allegedly failed to report in two Chapter 13 bankruptcy fillings that were dismissed last year. They claim he also failed to claim the income in his pending bankruptcy.

In his rebuttal, Hart contends that many of those deposits were per diem reimbursement payments for his work in the state legislature.

"It is Mr. Straight making false statements to the Court, not me," Hart wrote in his rebuttal. He is referring to DOJ attorney Adam Straight who filed the complaint on behalf of the IRS.

Based on Lodge's ruling Straight described the trust that Hart built to conceal his home ownership a "sham," which Hart also took umbrage to in his rebuttal.

"The repeated references that the Sarah Elizabeth Hart Trust is a sham is just not true," Hart wrote. "At the time the trust was set up, I hired what I thought were experts in this field and believed I was paying them to set up a bonafied trust done correctly and free of defects."

Hart continued to go through each allegation in the complaint and explain his innocence. At the beginning of his rebuttal, Hart conceded that he made a big mistake by trying to take his federal tax protest to the Supreme Court, and was now trying to rectify the situation through the Offer and Compromise process- but the IRS was making it difficult.

"Recognizing that my actions were a huge mistake did not alleviate the burden that IRS subsequently laid on me by denying all of my business expenses, and my attempts to reconcile the true amount of the taxes owed have dominated my actions since then."