 Internal Revengers, IRS Tax News, Dirty Dozen, IRS Warns of Scammers offering quote help end quote to set up an online account, create identity theft risk for honest taxpayers. Everyone hates scammers, but honestly, the IRS calling other people dirty for taking strangers money is like the sand man calling people dirty for taking off their shoes and walking on the beach because like their feet will get sandy and dirty, you know. I mean, I mean, it's like it's like the Bidens calling corporations dirty for accepting money from foreign countries. I mean, at least the companies were exchanging goods and services for the money they received. I mean, it's not like some foreign power company was paying massive amounts of money to get advice on how to run an energy business from a crackhead. I mean, seriously, I mean, just as a casual observer, it seems like paying a crackhead for advice on running an energy company doesn't sound like an arms link, you know, fair market value transaction. I mean, I'm just saying, but whatever, I'm sure I don't I don't understand the situation. But in any case, all I'm saying is beware of those offering free quote help end quote because it's always the ones that are so insistent on quote helping end quote you need to watch out for likely it's like some department store clerk working on commission following you around the store. They're like, I'm an expert in fashion. Are you sure you don't want to try on this jacket? And it's like, for the 20th time, no, leave me alone for crying out loud. I'm telling you, like when I when I fought when I bought my first suit to try to land an accounting job, the dang clerk convinced me a standard black or blue suit was not bold enough. So I walked out of there with a green suit. You know, I'm I'm convinced I lost like 20 job offers just due to that suit. I'm telling you, thanks for the help man. It's like, it's like with President Biden helping people out with raising prices by passing like an inflation reduction act, which just spends a bunch more money on stuff he wants presumably increase in inflation. And they're like, they're like, No, no, the government spending massive amounts of money doesn't cause inflation. It's like, Yeah, right. You're getting scammers. They're all the same. I tell you, I trust him about as far as Anthony Fauci can throw them. I are 2023 dash 54, March 22, 2023, Washington, the internal revenue service today warned taxpayers to watch out for scammers who try to sell or offer help setting up an online account on irs.gov the IRS website that puts their tax and financial information at risk of identity theft. So I think the scam here would be someone saying they're going to help someone else out to set up their online account with the IRS on the irs website irs.gov and in doing so, they're going to try to get access to the account themselves, possibly stealing information, identity information that can help them file fraudulent tax returns. Now note, there's a couple things to keep in mind with this whole scam. One is that the iris website has been a little bit slow and setting up their online account access in a similar fashion as other other private institutions that also deal with personal information. In other words, at this point in time, most people have banking information that they actually work through and they log in with an online account into their banking information, which is obviously kind of personal information. The IRS has been a little bit more hesitant to do that. So they now have the capacity to log into an IRS account for an individual, but it hasn't been something that many taxpayers have needed to really use. They only kind of log in or try to set that up when they need information, like a transcript or something. But as things get more complex going into the future, I would think that they would need to be setting up these these IRS accounts or the online accounts could be more and more of a system that can be helpful as they're changing things going forward. So for example, when they gave out the stimulus payments, or when they gave out prepayments for the child tax credit, those are things that it would be useful to see on an online account every time they give out a change or a letter or something like that, it would make more sense for people to look up their online account to see that kind of information. So I think the IRS is trying to set up these online accounts right now, while also kind of saying or explaining why they didn't do it earlier when obviously the private market, even for financial or sensitive information has been doing this for some time. Okay, so the IRS online account provides valuable tax information for people. But this information in the wrong hands can provide important information to help an identity thief try to submit a fraudulent tax return and the person's name in hopes of getting a big refund. So one of the big things these days is identity theft, if they steal your information and can file a fraudulent tax return, they're usually you would think looking for those refundable tax credits, those tax credits you can get even if your income goes below zero. So if they pull your information, they can get that and they can possibly try to try to get your refund or file for a fraudulent return. So people should watch out for these scams artists offering to help to set up these accounts because these are identity theft attempts to run off with the taxpayers personal or financial information. These third party online account scams are part of day three of the IRS annual dirty dozen campaign. There's a link to that here quote scammers are coming up with new ways all the time to try and steal information from taxpayers in quotes at IRS commissioner Danny Warfell quote an online account and IRS.gov IRS.gov can help taxpayers view important details about their tax situation. But scammers are trying to convince people they need to help setting up an account in reality no help is needed. It used to be actually somewhat of a complex system. The IRS I still always have to say this they tried to put in that facial recognition stuff for part of their ID system which was a mess and just seemed a little over intrusive. Do you really need my facial recognition information because no financial institution is doing that at this point in time. I could just imagine them putting cameras everywhere like out like in China or something and they're just scanning everybody's face as they walk like three feet up anyways but they stopped that that now. So it should be it shouldn't be too difficult of a process to set up your account because again, financial institutions are doing it and most people are not having a problem with it. So you would think they would be able to mirror something similar on the IRS side of thing. So this is just a scam to obtain valuable and sensitive info tax information that scammers will use to try stealing a refund. People should be wary and avoid sharing sensitive personal data over the phone, email or social media to avoid getting caught up in these scams in quote the dirty dozen is an annual IRS list of 12 scams and schemes that put together that put taxpayers in the tax professional community at risk of losing money, personal data and more some items on the list are new and some make a return visit while the list is not a legal document or a formal listing of agency inform enforcement priorities. It is intended to alert taxpayers, businesses and tax preparers about scams at large as a member of the security summit. The IRS with state tax agencies in the nation's tax industry have taken numerous steps over the last eight years to warn people to watch out for common scams and schemes, age tax season, including tax related identity theft, the Justice League over here, the Justice League. All right, any case. So along with the security summit initiative, the dirty dozen aims to protect taxpayers, businesses and the tax system from identity thieves and various hoaxes designed to steal money and information, including this new online account scheme, IRS online account, steer clear of help from third party scammers. Just do it yourself, man. This third party scammers trying to help you out aren't doing nothing for you. They do nothing good for you. Just steal your stuff. So in this scam targeting individuals, swindlers pose as swindlers. I like that pose as quote helpful in quote third party and offer to help create a taxpayers IRS online account at irs.gov. But we don't need no help. That's not he ain't helping us over here. We can see through that game. People should remember they can set these accounts up themselves, right? And do it yourself. Dang it. But third parties make these offers will try to steal a taxpayers personal information this way. Taxpayers can and should establish their own online account at irs.gov irs.gov, the iris dot website, go the iris go v the for victory over tax stuff. These scammers often ask for the taxpayers personal information, including address, social security number, or individual taxpayer identification number, the itin and photo identification. The criminal then sells this valuable information to other criminals. They can also use the sensitive information to file fraudulent tax returns, obtain loans and open credit cards accounts, those scoundrels. The iris urges people to watch out for these quote helpful in quote criminals. That means they're not really helpful. That's sarcasm. So the only place individuals should go to create an online iris online account is irs.gov. So obviously, if you're not on the irs.gov website, that's clearly an indication that the scammer is super scamming right there. People should not use third party assistance other than approved IRS authentication process through irs.gov to create their own irs account. So help stop fraud and scams as part of the dirty, dirty dozen awareness effort. The IRS encourages people to report individuals who promote improper and abusive tax schemes as well as tax return preparers who deliberately prepare improper returns to report an abusive tax scheme or a tax return preparer people should mail or fax a completed form 14242 report suspended abusive tax promotions or preparers. There's a link to that here and any supporting material to the irs lead development center and the office of promoter investigation. There's a link. There's an email address here or a mail a normal address if you want to use that if you're that that old fashioned alternatively taxpayers and tax practitioners may send this information to the IRS whistleblower office. There's a link to that there so you can blow a whistle at them for possible. Don't do it too loud though. Don't you don't want to hurt anyone's eardrums when you're blowing whistles. But any case that you can also for more information, you can see the abusive tax schemes and abusive tax return preparers. There's links to that stuff here. There'll be a link to this in the description.