Tax season is in full swing, and many Texas residents are actively filing their taxes on their own or searching for a knowledgeable tax preparer to help them file their 2021 taxes.
For the past few years, the typical tax-deadline date has been extended for Texas residents due to either the coronavirus pandemic or February 2021’s winter storm, causing some confusion on the deadline this year. Currently, there are no indications the IRS intends to extend this year’s deadline of April 18 for general tax returns.
The IRS continues to aggressively prosecute instances of criminal tax fraud across the nation, with $2.19 billion in tax fraud identified in 2021. Recently, the IRS has focused the efforts of its Criminal Investigations (CI) team on the exponential growth of cybercrime impacting the tax system, with $3.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency seized in 2021.
The IRS states its CI team has seen increasing growth in the number of criminals using digital technologies to facilitate Stolen Identity Return Fraud (SIRF), COVID fraud and other refund fraud using the tax system to receive government payments. Instances of data loss originating from business email compromises, phishing scams and bank account takeovers have also increased.
As consumers gather their tax documents and make plans to file their 2021 taxes this year, Better Business Bureau expects an increase in rates of IRS impostor scams, phishing scams and ghost tax preparer scams.
