IRS Doubles Number of Taxpayers Whose Data May Have Been Stolen
Washington — The Internal Revenue Service said Friday that criminals attacking its website may have stolen sensitive personal information from more than twice as many taxpayers as initially expected. In total, cyber criminals may have accessed tax data for more than 700,000 taxpayers by hacking the agency’s “Get Transcript” tool, which allows taxpayers to obtain copies of previous tax returns, the IRS said. Criminals tried to use the...
Why You May Wait Longer For Your Tax Refund This Year
Washington — In less than two weeks, taxpayers will be able to file their tax returns. But many taxpayers will have to wait longer to cash out their tax refunds thanks to new efforts from the IRS and state tax authorities to catch tax fraud. Last week, Illinois became the first state to announce that it will delay tax refunds to have more time to verify tax returns. State tax refunds won’t be issued until after March 1, the state’s...
Consumer Confidential: You’ve Bought It. Now What About Returning It?
On Black Friday, people’s thoughts turned from a celebration of thankfulness to spending gobs of cash on modestly discounted consumer goods. I’m not here to judge. But I am here to offer some tips on two of the big Rs of the holiday shopping season: rebates and returns. “There’s a lot of variability with how manufacturers and retailers handle this,” said Karl Quist, president of PriceBlink, an online price-comparison tool. “It...
Intuit Sued Over TurboTax Security
Two victims of identity theft have sued Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, claiming that poor security measures contributed to a possible spike in tax fraud this year. In the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in the Northern District Court of California, the two taxpayers accused the company of not taking enough steps to protect customers’ data or to stop criminals from using that information to file fraudulent tax returns and steal tax...
