• Beware of IRS-related scams. If you receive an email or phone call asking for your personal or financial information, delete it or send it to the FTC at spam@uce.gov for investigation. The IRS will never email taxpayers about issues related to their accounts or ask for your Social Security number or financial details over the phone. If you have any doubt whether a contact from the IRS is authentic, call them directly to confirm it.
• Review carefully if filing with a third party. When using software, CPA or national tax agency to prepare your taxes, ensure you are reviewing all the information carefully and that all the original paperwork is returned to you.
• Be diligent if you are e-filing. With e-filing, evidence of fraud is difficult to find—there are no signed tax forms, envelopes, or fingerprints. It’s easy for criminals to e-file using a real name and SSN and a phony W-2 or Schedule C. If you're filing your taxes online, be sure to use updated firewall, antivirus, and spyware software.
• Take precautions if mailing your filing. If filing by mail, walk the envelope inside of the post office and hand it to an employee. Too much mail is stolen out of the USPS and driveway mailboxes. Send your return by certified mail so that you know it has arrived safely. This also sends a message to each mail carrier that they had better provide extra protection to the document they are carrying.
3 Comments
So how exactly does this truncated system work? Will it be FATCA compatible? Now with FATCA, Americans abroad have to offer up their SSN to 300,000 plus foreign financial institutions, ~50 IGA countries and countless third party FATCA Compliance Industrial Complex data processors. So, doesn't this just take the domestic program global, and will anything be done to keep secure this massive round up of Americans data around the world? Oh, they are going to create a new numbering system, GIINs. More opportunity for theft. Great!
Posted by: Just Me | February 23, 2013 12:56 PM
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One of the problems is that prosecuting identity thieves seems to take a back burner with law enforcement. Apparently it is too hard for them to work with these crimes. They have no guidance and when they do get to court the judges are not familiar with or uncomfortable with the types of evidence that have to be presented. So as long as there is not an aggressive pursuit of the criminal, its going to continue. Truncating the SSN is a joke. It won't make a bit of difference - eliminate the SSN as an ID of any kind. That would help, make it illegal to use the SSN as an ID (oh, that already is the law, most people are unaware that the SSN was not supposed to be used as an ID..... but it seemed to be an easy common link and whoa... all of a sudden we have a 9 digit number that links every piece of information about us and makes these crimes easy easy easy.) Just eliminate the SSN or any other all inclusive linking ID number. Let's go back to our names and separate pieces of info. Sure its going to be harder for the massive credit industry and credit reporting, but maybe a little actual personal interaction and person to person knowledge relating to character would make for better economic and financial decisions anyway.
Posted by: SullivanAcctg | February 22, 2013 8:56 AM
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The IRS, Congress and the AICPA are missing the boat. The biggest leak in the system is through healthcare, not through any other system. When someone enters the healthcare system, they provide the most sensitive of information, including SSN, which is then pilfered and sold. It is the healthcare system where the focused should be placed, otherwise they are just wasting their time.
Posted by: cnrcpa | February 22, 2013 7:13 AM
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