 Internal Revenue Service IRS Tax News. IRS continues with dirty dozen this week, urging taxpayers to continue watching out for pandemic-related scams, including theft of benefits and bogus social security posts. The dirty dozen. Honestly, one dirty dude is bad enough, but a whole dozen dirty dudes, dude-esses, that could be quite odorous. And I'm telling you, if they just took a shower once in a while, they wouldn't need all this tax scammed stuff, because if they were clean or slightly just a little less odorous, somebody would hire them. They just need to start hanging out with some clean cats. Although cats aren't all that clean either, their idea of a bath being a tongue licking, and from personal experience, I can tell you my last tongue bath, although admittedly pleasurable, did not leave me feeling at all clean. But even though clean cats are not all that clean either, there's still a step up from the dirty dozen. That's what I'm talking about. Anyway, let's get on with the news here. IR 2022-117 June 6th, 2022 Washington, the Internal Revenue Service today kicked off the week with its fifth item on its 2022 annual dirty dozen scams warning list with a sad reminder that criminals still use the COVID-19 pandemic to steal people's money and identity with bogus emails, social security posts, and unexpected phone calls, among other things. Obviously this is the case because there's a lot of money that went out with relation to the COVID-19, making people's personal identity a more valuable item to the dirty dozen out there doing dirty deeds and trying to steal people's identity, possibly to get a piece of all the money that's coming out related to the COVID-19, and so on and so forth. So these scams can take a variety of forms, including using unemployment information and fake job offers to steal money and information from people. All of these efforts can lead to sensitive personal information being stolen with scammers using this to try filing a fraudulent tax return as well as harming victims in other ways. So in other words, we always had this kind of situation where people try to steal people's identity, right? That's what all the big social media companies do, right? That's what Facebook is even doing, right? They're stealing all your information. But if they get the information related to the taxes, they could try to file tax returns. That was not as big an issue before because you didn't have as many of these kind of refundable credits and these advanced child tax credit refundable credits, the earned income tax credits, which are significant these days plus the stimulus payments and all that kind of stuff. So now that those things are larger, obviously the identity theft and identity theft targeting possibly even lower income individuals which might be the most vulnerable to it become more valuable. And you would think that clearly just given the dynamics of the economy that you're gonna get more of this kind of scamming is gonna be the results. We gotta be more vigilant about it. So quote, scammers continue using the pandemic as a device to scare or confuse potential victims into handing over their hard-earned money or personal information. End quote, said IRS commissioner Chuck Redick. Quote, I urge everyone to be leery of suspicious calls, texts and emails, promising benefits that don't exist. Now this is one of the issues also that comes into play when we don't have like consistency. Obviously the pandemic and the response to it meant that we did a lot of changes to things on the tax code to help to deal with that including stimulus payments and adjustments to the tax law and this kind of stuff. But those kind of changes also make it a little bit more uncertain as well. So if you get a call these days and saying, well, there's a stimulus payment from the IRS or something like that that we just came up with last week and they're mailing it out or something you're more likely these days to say, oh, maybe that's true, right? So it's a little bit easier for again, the scammers to come up with scams which a few years ago would be implausible which these couple years because of the uncertainty around the pandemic and our responses trying to help out with the pandemic make things less clear. So that's a good area for scammers. The IRS has compiled the annual dirty dozen list for more than 20 years as a way of alerting taxpayers and the tax professional community about scams and schemes. The list is not a legal document or a literal listing of agency enforcement priorities. It is designed to raise awareness among a variety of audiences that may not always be aware of developments involving tax administration, caution and awareness are our best lines of defense against these crimes, end quote, Reddit said, quote, everyone should verify information on a trusted government website such as irs.gov, end quote, irs.gov. So basically, obviously if you get an email or a text message or something like that, what you would like to do, all these scams are kind of similar. They're gonna have obviously some kind of deception involved in it. They're usually gonna be trying to get information possibly leads you to another website and they're usually gonna have an element of urgency act now because we need your information or the IRS is gonna do something that they wouldn't normally do something bad or you're gonna miss out on possible money that you could have gotten anyways. So what you wanna do is go directly to the IRS website, not through a link generally by going to the IRS website, which takes more time. And that's why obviously scammers, you know, prey on the idea that they're gonna have this rush kind of factor involved act now kind of thing, sense of urgencies. But if you go to the IRS website directly, that's the suggested way to go. So a common scam the IRS continues to see during this period involves using crisis that affect all or most people in the nation such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the scams for which people should continue to be on the lookout include. Obviously, if you have the pandemic, you can kind of shotgun. That's when they can use kind of the shotgun approach, meaning they have a scatter shot. They're spreading the shot out to everybody because there's a whole lot of people that are gonna be impacted by some pandemic that's nationwide, which is a technique that you can use for this big wide net kind of strategy as opposed to targeting one individual kind of thing oftentimes. So economic impact payments and tax refund scams. Identity thieves who try to use economic impact payments, these is the EIPs, also known as stimulus payments are a continuing threat to individuals similar to tax refund scams. Taxpayers should watch out for these telltale signs of a scam. Any text messages, random incoming phone calls or emails inquiring about bank account information requesting recipients to click a link or verify data should be considered suspicious and deleted without opening. These includes not just stimulus payments but all tax refunds and other common issues. So if they're asking obviously for your banking information or something like that, then that's not generally good. You don't wanna be given that there. So you'd wanna go to the IRS website directly and kind of see if you can go from a source that you trust first as opposed to the email of the text messages. Remember the IRS won't initiate contact by phone, email, text or social media asking for the social security numbers or other personal or financial information related to the economic impact payments. So if you get a tweet or something like that could you give us our bank account in a tweet? Then, then, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do it this time. I'm gonna, okay. Also be alert the mailbox stuff. Routinely check your mail and report suspicious mail looses to personal inspectors. So any mail losses to the inspectors. Reminder, the IRS has issued all economic impact payments. So they had the three rounds of the economic impact payments. It looks like they're turning off the tap at this point given the fact that we got inflation kicking in here. So there's a lot of pressure not to be continuing the spending at this point in time. So you would think that they might have to stop with the stimulus payments to you, but we'll see you. So most eligible people already received their stimulus payments. People who are missing a stimulus payment or got less than a full amount may be eligible to claim a recovery rebate credit on their 2020 or 2020 federal tax return. So if you didn't get the economic impact payments, then you wanna get those because that is part of the reason that we're gonna be experiencing inflation for some time at least into the future, which is gonna be a form of tax. So you might as well have the good side of it, which was the money that they spewed out for a long period of time. And because you're gonna experience the downside, which is everything is gonna cost more, at least in part because of multiple factors. But in any case, get the money. So taxpayers should remember that the IRS website, irs.gov is the agency's official website for information on payments, refunds, and other tax information. Unemployment fraud leading to inaccurate taxpayer 1099 Gs. Because of the pandemic, many taxpayers lost their jobs and received unemployment compensation from their state. So now you've got money coming out from unemployment because people are due the unemployment. That's another opportunity because this is something that people aren't normally dealing with. Most people don't have dealing with unemployment all the time. So more eligible ability for state programs to be giving out money for people's identity that have a ability to get the money possibly if they were to file for it is another area for scammers to start their scamming. The dirty doesn't step in and start doing dirty deeds. However, scammers also took advantage of the pandemic by filing fraudulent claims for unemployment compensation. So I thought only, anyways, using stolen personal information of individuals who had not filed claims, payments made on these fraudulent claims went to the identity thieves. Taxpayers should also be on the lookout for a form 1099 G. So that's a form you can take a look at at the IRS website. There's a link to that here. Reporting unemployment compensation they didn't receive. So what's gonna happen if someone steals your money from unemployment, you get laid off, you don't file for unemployment because you don't need it or I don't know, you don't file. Someone else files for unemployment on your behalf claiming to be you because they stole your identity. And so then they get the money that you would have gotten which you might say, well, it's not a big deal because I didn't need it anyway. But then you're gonna have to get the 1099 G which means you'd have to report it as income. And then you'd be paying taxes on the benefits that you didn't get that someone else got on your behalf. And if they stole your identity for that they might be trying to steal your identity filing a fraudulent tax return to get a piece of all these refundable credits like the earned income credit, the child tax credits and so on and so forth. So for people in this situation, the IRS urges them to contact their appropriate state agency for a corrected form. So what do you do in that case? Well, you gotta talk to the state itself to correct the 1099 because you got two issues. One is that the state paid money to the wrong person which doesn't really affect you directly except that now it looks like you filed for unemployment which it didn't. And then you also got to pay taxes on it if you got a 1099 which is a federal issue on the federal government side of things. You can't fix it on the federal government side of things. You gotta go to the state generally. That's the first place you'd like to go to tell them to fix the 1099 so that the IRS doesn't think that you got the unemployment because you didn't get the unemployment because they sent the unemployment out to sub dirty doesn't deed doer dude or do that. So in any case, if a corrected form cannot be obtained so that a taxpayer can file a timely tax return, taxpayers should complete the return claiming only the unemployment compensation and other income they actually received. See identity theft and unemployment benefits for tax details and dol.gov forward slash fraud. There's links to those items here for state by state reporting information. Fake employment offers posted on social media. There have been many reports of fake postings on social media. Amazing. Are you kidding me? Fake postings on social media? That's unbelievable. The pandemic created, I think most of them are done by the press. But in any case, the pandemic created many newly unemployed people eager to seek new employment. These fake posts entice their victims to provide their personal financial information. This creates added tax risk for people because this information in turn can be used to file fraudulent tax return for a fraudulent refund or used in some other criminal endeavor. So again, that fraud that information which could include like what you need for your filing your tax return, social security name, address and so forth. Fairly basic information to file a tax return used to not be quite as valuable before the fact that now you got all these refundable credits. So if you could file a tax return even if you don't claim any income or claim a little bit of income you might get a significant amount of money with regards to these refundable credits in place which again of course increases the incentive for fraud that people will try to be getting this information to file fraudulent tax returns. So now we've got to be more on the lookout looking out for fake charities that steal your money the fake or bogus charities. So bogus charities are always the problems. So all charities are profit seeking anyways. I don't know what that, there's some good charities out there but you got to do your homework on the charities in any case just because they're a charity doesn't mean they're doing efficient good work out there people. They tend to be bigger threat than there is a national crisis like a pandemic. So obviously if there's a pandemic those fake charities step up and use that those dirty dozen step in and start their deeds of dirtiness. Taxpayers who give money or goods to a charity may be able to claim a deduction on their federal tax return. Taxpayers must donate to a qualified charity to get a deduction to check the status of a charity use the IRS tax exempt organization search tool. So if someone's asking you for money from a charity first of all, if they're pressuring you in any way to give them money like in front of other people and stuff like that then I wouldn't give them any money because that's not nice. But if you then you want to do kind of like your research generally and see if they're actually a charitable organization if they are that's a good sign but it still doesn't mean they're a good charitable organization cause they may be run inefficiently meaning all their money is going to salary and so forth and not going to the actual charity because they have no business pressure because they're not in the market to run efficiently. So it's harder to run efficiently as a charity or nonprofit and actually do the thing you're supposed to be doing. So then you want to see if that how efficient they are at running the charity. And if there's a good charitable legit organization running efficiently like a business does run efficiently but given the money to charity that's where the charity dollars should go. Anyways, that's my opinion. Here are some tips to remember about fake charity scams individuals should never let any caller pressure them. So if anybody's applying pressure on the charity like oh you're a jerk or whatever it's like nah and the only way you can stop it is just to hang up on them unfortunately or walk away because that's what sales people do they try to keep you on the phone. So you just got to say okay, I appreciate it. I'll check you out online and look into it further and hang up on them is the only way to do it. It's rude, it's rude though, it's rude I know but you can't do it. Okay, a legitimate charity will be happy to get a donation at any time. So there's no rush. Donors are encouraged to take time to do the research. Potential donors should ask for fundraiser for the charity's exact name, web address and mailing address so it can be confirmed later. Some dishonest telemarketers use names that sound like large well-known charities and confuse people. So they use names that are kind of similar to a charitable organization's name but aren't the same at all. So be careful of how donation is paid. Donors should not work with charities that ask them to pay by giving numbers from a gift card or by wiring money. So this is always the dead giveaway that you've got a pretty, a scam going. It's kind of funny that it actually gets there. They can be quite good. You're like, oh, someone is dying. One of my family member are dying over in Mexico or something like that, that's horrible. And then you start to say, I'll give them money right now and then they want it with a gift card. You're like, I can send money a hundred million different ways these days and you want it, why do you want a gift card? That seems unusual. That's usually, if someone wants the gift card then that's usually not a good sign because they don't want to track obviously the money. And so all these other ways of paying people that we have these days would be tracking the money in some way, which is what they're trying to avoid, you would think. So that's how scammers ask people to pay. So it's safest to pay by credit card and only after having done some research on the charity. So you're gonna say, I wanna know where my money went. I wanna have the track record that I bailed out as family member in Mexico or something like that so I can have the proof and hang it over their head every time we have a family reunion or anyways. So for more information about avoiding fake charities, visit the Federal Trade Commission website. There's a link to that. There's links to all this other stuff here that you can take a look at. There'll be a link to this in the description.