Tax fraud

The Internal Revenue Service’s expanded use of controls this tax season to identify fraudulent refund claims before accepting them into its processing system has allowed the IRS to identify approximately 35,000 fraudulent e-filed tax returns and 741 paper tax returns as of Feb. 29, 2016, according to a new government report.

Liberty Tax Service has closed 28 of its franchised locations in the New York City area, instructing them to cease preparing and filing tax returns for the remainder of the 2015 tax filing season.

The Senate Finance Committee has dropped a provision for regulating tax preparers from legislation that would curb identity theft and tax fraud.

The Internal Revenue Service is warning tax professionals about a new scam in which cybercriminals obtain remote control of tax preparers’ computer systems, complete and file client tax returns, and redirect tax refunds to thieves’ accounts.

A roundup of some of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen defended the IRS’s cybersecurity efforts during a contentious congressional hearing Thursday on the IRS’s ability to protect taxpayer systems.

The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing Tuesday to examine the Internal Revenue Service’s recent failures to protect taxpayer information from cybercriminals.

A roundup of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has introduced legislation to combat tax refund theft by identity thieves.

The Internal Revenue Service warned taxpayers about a new phishing scam targeting Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia residents.

A former U.S. Tax Court judge and her husband have been indicted for conspiracy to commit tax evasion and obstruction of an Internal Revenue Service audit.

Panama and the U.S. have at least one thing in common: Neither has agreed to new international standards to make it harder for tax evaders and money launderers to hide their money.

Leaked files from a Panama law firm that creates shell companies show that politicians, criminals and celebrities worldwide have used banks and shadow companies to hide their finances, according to a series of reports by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

A roundup of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

A New Jersey man has been indicted for placing hundreds of telephone calls to the Internal Revenue Service’s electronic payment system in an effort to obtain credit for hundreds of millions of dollars in fictitious tax payments to the IRS that he did not actually make.

Scammers are trying new tactics to convince taxpayers to hand over their personal information, the Internal Revenue Service warned.

A roundup of our favorite recent tax fraud cases.

The Internal Revenue Service is having trouble coordinating various overlapping programs that deal with referrals on tax evasion, in part because the referrals have to be submitted on paper forms, manually screened and then mailed to various departments within the IRS.

With the increasing reliance on technology for filing tax returns, is the federal government taking the necessary measures to protect personal information?

The odds of being criminally prosecuted by the Internal Revenue Service have fallen as a result of budget cuts at the hands of Congress, decreasing from 13.3 per million population in fiscal year 2013 to 9.2 per million in FY 2015, according to new research.