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Okay, so I haven't dealt with this personally, but I see on Facebook from an old acquaintance that her family's identity (well, husband, her and oldest child) have had their identities stolen. They were told that when they filed taxes someone had already filed under their names. Their oldest child had loans in their name, and they're like 9. Maybe younger.

So, not totally surprising. What was surprising was that the number of people who encountered the same thing this year while filing taxes. It wasn't a large number, but when 3 or 4 people (out of like 10 who replied) had the same thing happen this year, that seems excessive. Looking through the comments after that, most believe it leads to the BCBS hack. Those it happened to said that they were told it is bad in the St. Louis area.

BW23 wrote:Okay, so I haven't dealt with this personally, but I see on Facebook from an old acquaintance that her family's identity (well, husband, her and oldest child) have had their identities stolen. They were told that when they filed taxes someone had already filed under their names. Their oldest child had loans in their name, and they're like 9. Maybe younger.

So, not totally surprising. What was surprising was that the number of people who encountered the same thing this year while filing taxes. It wasn't a large number, but when 3 or 4 people (out of like 10 who replied) had the same thing happen this year, that seems excessive. Looking through the comments after that, most believe it leads to the BCBS hack. Those it happened to said that they were told it is bad in the St. Louis area.

my boss got his identity stolen for taxes this year too. definitely odd.

i remember the last year or 2 when i was in financial aid and verifying people's tax info, this was coming up more and more.

Mailed our returns yesterday. Hopefully, someone already paid for us and the IRS returns our check

I did have Anthem through my employer several years ago. Received a fraud notice from Chase that someone in California was trying to use my credit card. Placed a fraud alert with all 3 credit bureaus after that.

I had Anthem last year, but nobody will want my identity.

BW23 wrote:Okay, so I haven't dealt with this personally, but I see on Facebook from an old acquaintance that her family's identity (well, husband, her and oldest child) have had their identities stolen. They were told that when they filed taxes someone had already filed under their names. Their oldest child had loans in their name, and they're like 9. Maybe younger.

So, not totally surprising. What was surprising was that the number of people who encountered the same thing this year while filing taxes. It wasn't a large number, but when 3 or 4 people (out of like 10 who replied) had the same thing happen this year, that seems excessive. Looking through the comments after that, most believe it leads to the BCBS hack. Those it happened to said that they were told it is bad in the St. Louis area.

It's been a huge problem for a good 4-5 years, but you don't really hear much about it. All of the online tax prep sites made it way too easy for thieves to file. They knew exactly what was going on, but looked the other way because they were making money off of it. And of course the IRS was also really bad at stopping it. They've admitted to losing $5-10 billion a year the last several years and that's probably an extremely optimistic estimate. The BCBS thing might explain some of this year, but the culprit throughout this whole thing has been the health care industry in general. You have to give your social every time you get any kind of care, and they aren't very good about protecting that information.

You do not have to give your SS number for any Heathcare/procedure....please do not give that. There's a spot for it, but please leave it blank. They cannot refuse service due to your refusal. They don't need it (I own a business in healthcare...if a client puts their SS num on any form, I take my sharpie and black it out)

The only exception is medicare...and that's only because your medicare num IS you SS number (and that's dumb/I've complained about it forever)

The fraudulent tax return identity theft is largely the fault of Congress, which requires the IRS the issue immediate refunds to filers well before it has the information to verify the returns. For example, W-2s must be sent to employees by Jan 31st, but they don't have to get to the IRS until March 31st. If you file your 1040 in February, Congress requires the IRS to send a refund immediately before it has any way to check whether the basic information is accurate. With this system, it doesn't take much more than a name with Social Security number to file a fraudulent return claiming a refund. Thieves can then take the money and run, and the IRS is unlikely to notice anything for months or until the real owner of the Social Security number tries to file and finds their legitimate refund is on hold because money was sent to a thief instead.

It would be easy to fix this problem absent the pro-tax fraud lobby.

cardsfantx wrote:You do not have to give your SS number for any Heathcare/procedure....please do not give that. There's a spot for it, but please leave it blank.

Yeah, I worded that wrong. You don't have to give it, but they always ask and most people do.

Arthur Dent wrote:The fraudulent tax return identity theft is largely the fault of Congress, which requires the IRS the issue immediate refunds to filers well before it has the information to verify the returns. For example, W-2s must be sent to employees by Jan 31st, but they don't have to get to the IRS until March 31st. If you file your 1040 in February, Congress requires the IRS to send a refund immediately before it has any way to check whether the basic information is accurate. With this system, it doesn't take much more than a name with Social Security number to file a fraudulent return claiming a refund. Thieves can then take the money and run, and the IRS is unlikely to notice anything for months or until the real owner of the Social Security number tries to file and finds their legitimate refund is on hold because money was sent to a thief instead.

It would be easy to fix this problem absent the pro-tax fraud lobby.

I don't think congress requires refunds to be issued immediately, but they do require interest to be paid beyond a certain timeframe. So the IRS pushes refunds out to avoid that. The government has already held that money anywhere from 4-16 months interest free, so it's a tough sell to convince people to wait even longer. I would be just fine with waiting indefinitely until everything can be verified, but I usually only get a small refund and I'm not dependent on that money for anything. For a lot of other people that's not the case.

Add my aunt to the list, she was part of the BCBS debacle.