There is a fair amount of activity with the IRS-processing Employee Retention (Tax) Credit (ERC) refunds with two announcements this past month. I would call it good news for those who have legitimate claims and bad news for those who filed a not-so-legitimate claim. Actually, not all bad news for the not-so-legitimate claim group. The IRS has reopened the Voluntary Disclosure Program (VDP), which will run through November 22, 2024. As you may recall, this was started earlier this year whereby the IRS allowed you to revoke your claim and return any funds you believe were improperly claimed, keeping 20%…
Posts tagged as “Fraud”
I wrote an article over 3½ years ago about direct deposit fraud, first published in the FBI annual Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) report for 2018, when about 100 complaints were reported. Today, years later, we are finding it occurring on too-regular of a basis, and I would not be surprised if there were 100 complaints a day. How it occurs is the fraudster diverts an employee’s paycheck to their “bank account,” which they will then clear out as soon as the funds hit on pay day. The two questions you may be asking are ‘how do they change the…
Ever since the IRS did away with the Advanced Earned Income Credit (EIC) in 2010, Box 9 on the W-2 form has sat there unused and neglected as a greyed out box. The instructions simply read “Do not enter an amount in box 9.” Now, six years later, the IRS has an idea to help combat tax-related identity theft and refund fraud. Their objective is to utilize this box to verify that the W-2 data submitted by taxpayers on e-filed returns is legitimate. This year, the IRS will run a pilot program where a limited number of W-2s…