At least 40 million low-income families may have to wait for their 2016 refunds, even if they file early, because the IRS needs extra time to fix issues caused by identity theft and fraud.

The biggest impact is on the poorer families that depend on the timely receipt of their Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and child-tax credits, which is usually a nice amount to that lets them catch up on debt and other expenses.

Please look at my previous TLS articles about how to spot a fake IRS ransom letter.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, remember him? He was the guy that the House tried to impeach because he lied to Congress, under oath, about the mysterious deletion of Lois Lerner’s emails. He threw her under the bus and beat the impeachment. He just told the Associated Press “his agency was sensitive to the needs of taxpayers.” LOL. The law requires early refunds to be delayed only until February 15. LOL as in Lots of luck.

1.2 million legit 2015 refunds were delayed by at least 30-days last year.

The delayed refunds are to the working poor for the sake of “lowering the losses due to fraud”, which BTW cost us all $8.9 billion in 2013 and 2014. Those delays allegedly prevented over $47 billion in bogus IRS payments. That’s when Lerner’s hard drives got erased, so who knows if that’s true or not.

The devious crooks responsible for the ain’t slowing down. Just in the first quarter of 2016, taxpayers were bilked out of billions of dollars by the tax fraud and identity theft industry. We’ve got upwards of 41 organized organizations, which will add up to around 70 when the 2016 breaches are finally added up. Email phishing and phone call social engineering requests mostly ask for the coveted payroll records. But the real prize is the W-2 info.

You should know the deal by now, LPD and the Prosecutor’s Office as well as myself have described the methods many times here on the Scoop. Someone pretends to be the CEO or other high-level officer within a company needing the payroll or tax records by email or fax. Some pose as IRS agents or law enforcement officers. The calls sound so official, and most of them are just like legit requests previously made. Or terrorists. So, the employee complies. Now the individual or company can’t file their legitimate returns and sweat out what will happen as a result of the incidents. Credit cards opened in their name, bank accounts hijacked in addition to charges of tax fraud and wondering who is using your social to get your money. Even so, the IRS says that most refunds will be issued within 21 days. Most.

“These increased security screenings are invisible to most taxpayers,” Koskinen posted in a statement on the IRS website.

“But we want people to be aware we are taking additional steps to protect taxpayers from identity theft, and that sometimes means the real taxpayers face a slight delay in their refunds.”

Oh well, I guess I’m gonna should put off that Pesach cruise, trip to see the kids in EY. And I thought I could catch up on tuition or finally fix that leaky roof – pay off my car loan. Sigh.

Ron Benvenisti
Business IT Risk Analyst
Integris Security LLC