This year, taxpayer identity theft took a maliciously clever turn and it seems that the IRS assisted them in this endeavor.
The phony tax returns that were filed appeared to be very similar to the taxpayers’ previous years’ returns. So close that the standard pattern deviation software did not catch this type of filing. How could this happen you ask?
The criminals are getting smarter and taking more steps in their process, thus having a greater success rate. It turns out that rather than just using stolen names, birthdates, street addresses and Social Security information to file tax returns with made-up numbers, the criminals used the stolen information to access the taxpayers’ previous returns to make up believable numbers to file for tax refunds.
The thieves were successful in about half of their attempts, 100,000 out of approximately 200,000 attempts to acquire taxpayer information on the Get Transcript section of the IRS website. This section requires other personal verification questions that only the taxpayer is supposed to know.
While those taxpayers affected are still a relatively small number (.07% of taxpayers) of the over 145 million individual income tax filings yearly, multiple years per person appear to have been downloaded, and to the people affected, being victimized is very stressful.
If your identity is stolen or you believe it to be stolen, you should file a report with the local law enforcement authorities as well as reports to the credit reporting agencies. Ask the police to run a full to ensure a criminal records check to make sure that the victim’s name has not been used falsely to commit a crime.
The bottom line is that is, the victim should “prepare to be surprised” with what is done or could be done under their name.