Making sure you file your taxes properly isn’t your only concern this year. According to walletpop.com, identity theft has now impacted the tax world as well. Crooks who gain access to your social security number may use it to file your taxes in hopes of getting a refund if they can file before you do. How can they get away with it? Unfortunately the IRS systems aren’t sophisticated enough to flag a suspicious return. In examples cited in the walletpop article, the fraudulent filers didn’t even have correct employment history for the people they were impersonating. Yet the return was automatically processed by the IRS without incident until the real filer submitted their actual return and was notified of the double filing. Just further evidence that you must keep close tabs on your SSN. Consider using an identity theft protection agency that monitors access to your SSN.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Identity Theft Protection, Tax Preparation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.