The AP just released a story here on the growing problem of ID theft and taxpayers. In these types of cases a thief, using your social security number will file a tax refund request and receive your refund check - often times prior to you filing and finding the problem.
Here are some of the highlights from the article:
- Taxpayer Identity theft has increased from 51,702 in 2008 to 248,357 in 2010 - nearly a five fold increase in two years.
- Many identify theives don't get prosecuted - the IRS only pursues criminal investigation in a small number of income tax fraud cases. in 2010, they only started 4700 investigations of all types.
- IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman claims that 95 percent of those prosecuted for tax refund-related identity theft go to prison
- Tax identity thieves typically submit returns for tax refunds early on in the filing season. The legitimate taxpayer usually files a bit later, and only then learns from the IRS that two tax returns were filed using the same Social Security number.
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