IRS Continues to Urge Tax Preparers to be Vigilant as IRS Continues to see Steep Declines in Tax Related Identity Theft

The IRS announced today that they continued to see a decline in tax-related identity theft in 2017, which they attribute to the Security Summit effort between IRS, states and the tax industry.

Key indicators of identity theft dropped for the second year in a row in 2017. This includes a 40 percent decline in taxpayers reporting they were victims of identity theft in 2017 as compared to 2016.

Even as the Security Summit partners have strengthened their defenses, the IRS continues to urge everyone (including tax preparers) to be vigilant and alert. In order to commit identity theft tax fraud the cyber-criminals need more detailed financial information that will allow them to prepare a more realistic fraudulent return to better impersonate legitimate taxpayers. They therefore are targeting places where large amounts of sensitive financial information reside such as tax preparers and human resource departments.

See IRS NewsRelease IR-2018-21 (Key IRS Identity Theft Indicators Continue DramaticDecline in 2017) for more information on the Security Summit efforts to combat tax identity theft and what preparers should continue to do to protect themselves from becoming a victim of a data breach.