Tax Time Open Season for ID Thieves and IRS Impersonators

The following is a special fraud alert provided by the National Consumers League:

Tax season is officially underway! While most of us will probably wait until closer to April 15 to deal with our income taxes, there is one group that can’t wait to get a jump on filing: Tax ID thieves.

Identity theft has been the most common type of scam reported to the Federal Trade Commission for the past 13 years. For ID thieves, stealing an identity is just the beginning. Ultimately, they aim to turn that identity into cash. Using stolen personal information to open new lines of credit used to be the endgame. In recent years, ID thieves have latched on to a new scam: using stolen identities to obtain fraudulent tax refunds.

According to the FTC, more than 46% of all identity theft complaints now stem from government documents or benefits fraud, the vast majority of which stems from tax-related ID theft. In 2011 alone, approximately 1.1 million suspicious tax returns were identified, resulting in $3.6 billion in potentially fraudulent refunds being paid out, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

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Read one consumer’s story of nearly falling victim to tax fraud at fraud.org.