Dive Brief:
- The Internal Revenue Service has kicked off its annual list of tax scams and schemes that taxpayers should avoid, with daily additions to the 2024 list to date including warnings for business filers as well as consumers.
- The scams that may entangle business filers this year, according to the list so far, may be familiar to tax professionals as they are making repeat appearances on the list. They include: questionable employee retention credit claims, fuel tax credit claims and “phishing and smishing” scams, which entail bad actors who falsely pretend to help taxpayers set up online IRS accounts.
- Businesses should heed the warnings and learn about the various tax credits and deductions available to them, because ultimately it is the person or corporate officer who signs the tax return who is responsible for the decisions made, according to Tom O’Saben, director of tax content and government relations with the National Association of Tax Professionals. “They can say, ‘Well, I only did what my [tax] preparer told me to do,” O’Saben said in an interview. But “blaming a third party is not normally an effective excuse,” he said.
Dive Insight:
The Dirty Dozen list campaign — which is not a legal document or a formal listing of agency enforcement priorities and was started in 2002 — lists 12 scams and schemes that put taxpayers, businesses and the tax professional community at risk of…
