Life Fright

Buckle up for some real adulting stuff. With the tax filing deadline looming over us, there’s a sneaky way scammers can extrapolate money from you. If they file a tax return in your name, they can formulate the return in such a way to receive a refund, pocketing their ill-gotten gains while leaving you to clean up the mess. Then, when you file a true bona fide tax return, you’ll run into issues because the federal government only accepts one 1040 tax form for that year. At that point, you’ll have to report the identity theft (through filing IRS Form 14039 to just start with) and go down the rabbit hole of locking down your identity while filing a paper tax return to override the fake return.

To prevent this, I encourage everyone to obtain an IRS Filing Pin. This should be obtained every year and the six digit number must be used as a form of verification when submitting your tax return otherwise it will get rejected and you will have to try again. Don’t worry though, the pin is recoverable through the online account you will create to obtain the pin. This service is available for everyone regardless of whether they are actually filing a tax return for that year.

On a personal note, I did run into this situation a few years ago when I already knew my social security number was compromised. Luckily there were many resources out there to help me navigate the situation and I was forewarned that this tax return scheme would be a way these awful scammers would try to obtain money. In my case, someone had attempted to file a tax return through a Turbotax account they created in my name. I was notified of this and after talking with the Turbotax security team, they shut down that fraudulent account. Fortunately, I had already filed my taxes at that point so even if the thieves were successful in submitting a return, it would have been rejected. Ever since then I have always obtained a filing pin every year as an extra security measure and for the peace of mind.

The digital world is rife with terrible actors running schemes to trick you out of your hard-earned money and create extra problems for you. Don’t let this be one of the ways. Take the time to proactively protect yourself and prevent the headache and mess that could happen!