Regular readers of the ol' blog noticed last week that I mentioned tax scams and identity theft in a couple of post last week.
If you missed them, they were on added Internal Revenue Service efforts this filing season to detect tax scams and return fraud and about how filing early helps beat tax ID thieves to the stolen refund punch.
Well, here’s a third mention. And this time, it’s some good news from the National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA).
The IRS is making progress in reducing the time it takes to help people who are victims of tax-related identity theft.
Years to help tax ID victims: Earlier this year, NTA Erin M. Collins criticized the IRS for taking so long to help these tax crime targets. In her annual report to Congress issued Jan. 8, she pointed out that the delays in helping ID theft victims had increased to nearly two years in fiscal year 2024, up from 19 months in fiscal 2023.
Not only do these taxpayers have to deal with the emotional toll of having their identities stolen, it means immediate tax dollar losses.
When they go to file their legitimate returns, which is when they usually discover their information has already been used on a false return, they face processing delays. That not only stalls issuance of their rightful refunds to them, but it also can lead to other tax issues, such as subsequent erroneous balance due notices later if accounts are not adjusted in a timely manner.
Things are improving: But things are getting a bit better, according to an update from Collins in a Jan. 29 NTA Blog post.
It's still a while. Collins looks at a couple of processing cycles so far in fiscal year 2025, and found that those specific backlogs were 515 and 473 days. But it is progress.
Collins’ welcome information is this weekend’s Saturday Shout Out. I’ll let you read Collins' elaboration on the tax ID theft processing situation it at your leisure.
I also recommend that you check the Taxpayer Advocate Service resources listed at the end her post. They take you to additional TAS pages on dealing with tax identity theft and how you can protect yourself.
And on that positive note, I’m off to enjoy more 2025 Caribbean Series baseball games on MLB Network. Right now, the Dominican Republic is whopping the team from Japan, which I presume is made up of the country's few players that the Los Angeles Dodgers didn’t sign!
You also might find these items of interest:
- How to report tax scams and fraud
- Getting an IP PIN is a smart taxpayer security move
- Watch for these data theft red flags, by tax and other financial crooks
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