Crack down on tax fraud Tax refund postponed for 1 week

Crack down on tax filing fraud Tax refund postponed for 1 week The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is scheduled to start accepting 2012 income tax returns on the 30th. In order to strengthen the verification of identity theft reports...

Crack down on tax filing fraud and tax refunds are delayed by one week. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is scheduled to begin accepting 2012 income tax returns on the 30th. In order to strengthen checks on identity thieves filing false tax returns, many people may be delayed by about a week this year before they can get their tax refund checks. The IRS is working to make its automated systems more sensitive to possible signs of fraud, which means some tax forms will be scrutinized more closely. Last year the IRS blocked $20 billion in false tax refunds, a significant increase from $14 billion the year before. IRS spokesperson Michelle Eldridge said the IRS expects to meet its goal of issuing 90% of refunds within 21 days. The IRS has been trying to streamline tax return processing in an effort to speed up refunds in an effort to encourage electronic filing and reduce taxpayers' reliance on short-term loans, but it also increases the opportunity for fraud. Taxpayer identity theft has become very common in recent years. In fiscal year 2012, the IRS received 450,000 identity theft cases, a 78% increase from the previous year. After criminals illegally obtain a taxpayer's Social Security number from sources such as a doctor's office or a company's payroll department, they are able to forge wage reports and false tax returns. They focus their crimes at the beginning of tax filing, seeking to deposit tax refunds into a one-time charge-off card or withdraw the tax refund before the real taxpayer files. An organized identity thief group will first send a person to a tax filing company to file a tax return to test whether the false documents can be successfully deceived. If successful, they will immediately send dozens of similar tax returns to different tax filing companies, sometimes with tax refunds of up to 8,000 yuan per tax return. Taxpayers whose identities have been stolen sometimes have to wait months to receive their tax refunds and go through IRS verification procedures and steps that often take years to complete. This year the IRS is introducing more "filters" to prevent tax refund fraud. These "filters" are used to analyze the tax return and determine whether the return needs more inspections. The IRS won't release details to avoid giving information to criminals.