With the tax-filing season upon us, you must be particularly aware of the threat of identity theft. Your tax return contains sensitive personal information, and scammers can use your Social Security number to get a job or to file a false tax return to obtain a refund.
You need to take the necessary steps to ensure that your tax information does not fall into the wrong hands. You should consider such precautions as:
- Making sure that you have a reputable and trustworthy person prepare your taxes. Find a tax preparer who is open year-round, is a CPA, Enrolled Agent, or attorney, and has several years of experience. Check with the State Board of Accountancy and the local bar association.
- Ensuring that your tax preparer does not outsource the preparation of your tax returns. Some tax preparation firms outsource its tax preparation to retirees in other states or to tax preparers in a foreign country.
- Filing your taxes early to reduce the window of time in which a thief could fraudulently file using your SSN.
- If transferring documents electronically, only do so through a secure Internet connection. Transferring sensitive tax documents by email is taking an unnecessary risk. To better protect our clients, we use a 256-bit encrypted file transfer system.
- If using the U.S. mail, go to the post office directly to mail all tax filings and documents. Our firm’s policy is that when mailing tax returns or other confidential documents to our clients or to a tax jurisdiction, we always hand deliver the mailings to our local post office.
- If you have a curb mail box, be sure to remove your mail ASAP as thieves realize that this is the time of the year that you will be receiving sensitive tax documents.
- The IRS contacts taxpayers by mail. The IRS does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email to request personal or financial information. This includes any type of electronic communication, such as text messages and social media channels. Be alert for telephone tax scams whereby thieves tell you that you must provide certain sensitive information to avoid prosecution or to confirm the information on your tax filings.
- Immediately sending your tax preparer any notice received from a tax authority.
If you want to learn more about your personal situation, we invite you to call 610-594-2601 today to make an appointment at our Exton PA CPA office to discuss your situation. You can also schedule a consultation at Click Here.
