More and more often, personal data gets hacked, exposed, etc. Some of you remember the Equifax data breach with 147 million people impacted and a settlement of up to $425 million dollars and there have been many other cases since then. The most recent one is the National Public Data that exposed 3 billion individuals
In the mid year report to Congress, National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M. Collins stated that there are significant delays for victims of identify theft, which subsequent delays on their refunds. As reported in the IR-2024-173, the average time to resolve the identify theft when up from 19 months in 2023 to 22 months in April
In the last months, we have reported some issues with popular tax software that was charging fees or hide the free version from users. In a recent investigation by The Markup, there was evidence that code in some of popular tax preparation software including TaxAct, TaxSlayer and H&R Block sent financial and tax information to
During the pandemic, the news and newspapers have reported billions of dollars stolen through unemployment fraud and identity theft. Axios reported, “Unemployment fraud during the pandemic could easily reach $400 billion, according to some estimates, and the bulk of the money likely ended in the hands of foreign crime syndicates—making this not just theft, but
The IRS shared this morning Tax Tip 2021-07 - All taxpayers are now eligible for identity protection PINs. The Identity Protection PIN is a six-digit code known only to the taxpayer and to the IRS. It helps prevent identity thieves from filing fraudulent tax returns using a taxpayers' personally identifiable information. Here are a few
