IRS Caught Over 30,000 Tax Returns Involving ID Theft

The Internal Revenue Service’s expanded use of controls this tax season to identify fraudulent refund claims before accepting them into its processing system has allowed the IRS to identify approximately 35,000 fraudulent e-filed tax returns and 741 paper tax returns as of Feb. 29, 2016, according to a new government report.

The report, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, said the IRS also identified and confirmed 31,578 fraudulent tax returns involving identity theft as of Feb. 29, 2016, and identified 20,224 prisoner tax returns for screening as of March 5, 2016.

TIGTA released its annual interim report Thursday on the IRS’s performance during tax-filing season, defined as the period from January 1 through mid-April. TIGTA plans to issue the final results of its analysis of the 2016 filing season in September. Read More