used with permission from SBA.gov
by Barbara Weltman
Tax-related identity theft is prominent on the IRS’s 2019 Dirty Dozen list of Tax Scams. Tax-related identity theft is not limited to stealing personal information of individuals. Because of successful efforts to crack down on such identity theft, thieves have shifted their focus to businesses. They create and use, or attempt to use, the identifying information of businesses to obtain tax benefits. For example, as the IRS has noted, cybercriminals that obtain a business’s tax identification number may file a return claiming a tax refund because of a fuel credit or a research credit used as a Social Security tax offset.
It’s essential for you as a business owner to understand that tax-related identity theft is real and could hit your company. Vulnerability exists regardless of the size of a company (amount of revenues, value of assets, or number of employees). The IRS lists 5 signs of identity theft:
Identity thieves are continually creating new scams to utilize business information to their financial advantage. Here are some examples of previous scams to look out for:
Big tipoffs that emails are from scammers are poor grammar and misspellings. The IRS has provided this example of a wire transfer scam: “Please confirm the receipt of my message, Authorized can you handle domestic transfer payment now?”
Protection from tax-related identity theft should be part of your overall best practices for data protection from hackers and scammers.
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