Tax Topic

Identity Theft

You should always take precautions with your identity information, in particular your Social Security number. Push back when asked for your Social Security number as a matter of course. Do not give it to anyone who does not truly need it. Over the last few years, the IRS has received many, many fraudulent tax returns, filed by persons trying to get taxpayers' refunds.

After we complete your tax return and receive your signed Form 8879 (authorization to efile your tax return) and efile the tax return, the IRS immediately checks, as part of the efiling process, to see if any of the Social Security numbers on your tax return have been used on any other tax return for the given year. If so, the efiling is rejected. Sometimes this happens because one of your children filed his/her own tax return when they shouldn't have, but in most cases it's a fraud issue (another good reason to get your tax return efiled early, before the bad guys file one in your name/SS#).

If the efiling is rejected, we have to prepare a manual filing for you and attach Form 14039 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f14039.pdf), both of which will take extra time and increase your tax prep fee.






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