Don’t Be a Victim of Tax Refund Fraud in ’16
Summary: The IRS and the 50 states agreed to examine more than 20 new data elements collected by online tax providers such as TurboTax and H&R Block ahead of the 2016 filing season, including repeated use of the same Internet address to file multiple returns, device information, and how quickly a return is completed. The IRS estimated it prevented $24.2 billion in fraudulent identity theft refunds in 2013 but paid out $5.8 billion in bogus refunds that year, and in August 2015 disclosed that crooks abused its Get Transcript feature to steal data on more than 334,000 Americans.
Why it matters: IRS identity theft criminal investigations are down almost 50 percent since 2013, and the same static-data process thieves used against 334,000 taxpayers also works to fraudulently obtain a victim's IP PIN.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Fraud & Scams
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