TurboTax halts all state tax filings due to fraud concerns

[Printer Bandit]

Nope. :'(

I'm still digging for deductions though.

i feel you bro. i have to give a shit load for federal, but get some back for state.

 

[Blanky]

At least TT is able to detect it, clearly the IRS doesn't have a clue what to do about all the fraud. From the news reports I've seen most of it would be extremely simple to catch. Like 100 tax returns for the same address, thousands files from prisoners or tax returns issued to dead people.

Sometimes I wish I worked in law enforcement. So many criminals are so stupid it would be like shooting fish in a barrel, particularly with things like this, with which a paper trail is so pervasive.

 

[Insomniator]

Whatever... somehow I owe money even though they take 500 out of my paycheck EVERY WEEK.

 

[unokitty]

IRS refunded $4B to identity thieves

The Internal Revenue Service issued $4 billion in fraudulent tax refunds last year to people using stolen identities, with some of the money going to addresses in Bulgaria, Lithuania and Ireland, according to a Treasury report released Thursday.

The IRS sent a total of 655 tax refunds to a single address in Lithuania, and 343 refunds went to a lone address in Shanghai.

Fraudsters Fool IRS Into Sending 2,000 Refunds to Same Address

A single household in Lansing, Mich., pulled down at least $3.3 million in tax returns after the IRS failed to notice the address was listed on more than 2,000 separate filings.

J. Russell George, the treasury inspector general for tax administration who released the report detailing the incident, says it is just one of many fraud cases among results he finds “extremely troubling.”

Snopes: True

The Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to "unauthorized" alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically occupied by thousands of "unauthorized" alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the IRS sent thousands of tax refunds to "unauthorized" aliens were in Atlanta.

The IRS sent 11,284 refunds worth a combined $2,164,976 to unauthorized alien workers at a second Atlanta address; 3,608 worth $2,691,448 to a third; and 2,386 worth $1,232,943 to a fourth.

IRS sent your tax return to someone else?

They don't care. They don't have to care...

Uno

 

[CPA]

Another reason to pay in rather than get a refund. When you pay you generally file paper.

Also another reason to abolish the income tax and go with a sales tax.

 

[brianmanahan]

Another reason to pay in rather than get a refund. When you pay you generally file paper.

Also another reason to abolish the income tax and go with a sales tax.

that's the governor of ohio's goal, to eventually get rid of income tax and make it all sales/corporate/gas/etc tax.

 

[Printer Bandit]

Remind me again why we're not on the gold / silver standard?

 

[MarkXIX]

Another reason to pay in rather than get a refund. When you pay you generally file paper.

Also another reason to abolish the income tax and go with a sales tax.

I agree with a federal sales tax. That way, I can be a cheap ass and save even more money!

Ahead of any such change I would likely buy all the things I wanted and then treat them right for years to come and live good.

 

[who?]

Remind me again why we're not on the gold / silver standard?

Because not being on any standard allows the government to print more money to pay off debt whenever we feel like it.

 

[who?]

Remind me again why we're not on the gold / silver standard?

So that foreign governments with lots of dollars can't demand we trade our gold for the dollars.

 

[who?]

Remind me again why we're not on the gold / silver standard?

This guy thinks it was a mistake:http://www.forbes.com/sites/charles...al-monetary-error-the-verdict-40-years-later/

 

[jlee]

This guy thinks it was a mistake:http://www.forbes.com/sites/charles...al-monetary-error-the-verdict-40-years-later/

That guy thinks the US economy would have 50% more money and things would cost way less.

At 3% growth, the U.S. economy is about $8 trillion smaller than it would have been had we continued to experience the average growth rate prior to Nixon severing the link between dollar and gold. That implies that median family income today would be about $70,000, or nearly 50% higher than it is today.

Moreover, if Nixon and his successors had maintained the promise that a dollar was worth 1/35th of an ounce of gold, a barrel of oil today would sell for less than $2.50.

I'm no economist, but that smells funny.

 

[C1]

And Intuit supposedly was so concerned about the user experience that it concluded crucial to strip out Schedules C, D, E & F (and K1) from Deluxe and move them to Premier.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-06/minnesota-just-banned-turbotax

 

[Belegost]

Another reason to pay in rather than get a refund. When you pay you generally file paper.

Also another reason to abolish the income tax and go with a sales tax.

These people are fraudulently filing tax returns, why would they not enter fraudulent data on the return so that they are sent money?

The one strange thing here is that it seems like the fraudsters either have W2 data to correctly give withholding information, or state tax boards are not doing a simple sanity check to match the amount claimed as being withheld on the return against the amount actually remitted over the year.

 

[luv2liv]

ok. so it looks like only e-filing is halted.
you can still print out all the forms and mail it in. thats not too bad assuming you havent been victimized.

 

[Humpy]

These people are fraudulently filing tax returns, why would they not enter fraudulent data on the return so that they are sent money?

The one strange thing here is that it seems like the fraudsters either have W2 data to correctly give withholding information, or state tax boards are not doing a simple sanity check to match the amount claimed as being withheld on the return against the amount actually remitted over the year.

I've read that it takes the feds through July to get the W2's cross checked against the tax returns. States probably aren't much quicker.

I'm surprised this was made public. When you are collecting trillions losing a few billion to fraud isn't going to be a concern. If people make a stink about it though, you'll have to pretend to do something to "fix" it, i.e. do a better job of keeping quiet.

 

[killster1]

Whatever... somehow I owe money even though they take 500 out of my paycheck EVERY WEEK.

you paid what 24000 in taxes and still owe nice.. ima check freetaxusa thanks

 

[Blanky]

Snopes: True

So they aren't even doing the most elementary of anti-fraud searches.

 

[alcoholbob]

That guy thinks the US economy would have 50% more money and things would cost way less.

I'm no economist, but that smells funny.

On a gold standard we wouldn't have a $4 trillion dollar government (really about 5 trillion if you include off-balance spending).

Nearly half of all spending is by the government in our economy, yet it only accounts for about a quarter of the GDP. The other half is spent by the private sector and accounts for the other three quarters. If government cant finance itself with 0% interest rates then it cant grow this large as a percentage of money spent; the consequence would be all the extra dollars (real money or credit) remains in the private sector would result in a nominal GDP about 2 or 3 times its current amount.

If you look at the buying power in terms of meat, durable goods, housing, medical bills, and higher education, a high school graduate in the 1960s on average earned about $70,000-100,000 a year (closer to the lower end in terms of food and durable goods, closer to the higher end in terms of housing, medical and education) so it doesn't seem funny at all. In addition jobs were easy to find, over 90% of men had jobs back then, today something like 65% of men have jobs, and only earn a median income of around $35,000.

Today we produce about 1/6th as much meat and about 1/5th as much durable goods as we did in the 1960s, so it's no wonder our dollars don't go as far as they did before since we don't produce as many goods that we can consume, as the value of money is simply the level of goods and services produced by an economy. This is why a middle school drop-out on minimum wage in the 1960s could go to McDonalds and buy more hamburgers with their annual income than your average college graduate today, and afford to spend a smaller percentage of their income on rent as well.

Although the oil price is probably exaggerated in relation to wages. On a gold standard we would not have had so much inflation, so maybe $2.50/barrel for oil but wages might be more like around $25,000.