Every year, we warn you about tax return identity theft: bad guys all over the world obtain enough personal information about U.S. taxpayers to file fake tax returns and steal our refunds. After a taxpayer’s identity gets stolen in this way, the Internal Revenue Service issues them a special identification number that they have to enter when filing their tax return. The problem is that these numbers are pretty easy to access, too, and the IRS doesn’t have a good replacement yet. [More]
tax refund theft
Hackers Stole Doctors’ Tax Refunds By Breaking In To Payroll Software
By 4.30.14
Last week, we shared the scary news that a ring of tax refund fraudsters appeared to have filed tax returns on behalf of hundreds of doctors and other health care professionals, harvesting their refunds. Early theories were that hackers had used the recent release of federal data about Medicare providers, or obtained a list of doctors. The truth was even scarier. [More]
