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Moreover, fraudulent tax filings can enable criminals to steal individuals’ tax refunds by filing returns in their names. In 2015, nearly 700,000 taxpayers in the United States reported being the victims of tax identity theft.
To the DOR’s credit, the agency told the auditor’s office that it plans to address these — and other — issues by developing clearer incident-response guidelines and convening a committee to look at third-party risks, but it offered no timeline for when these tasks would be completed. And heading into 2020, it’s astonishing that such basic, baseline security controls and procedures are still not in place, especially given that the DOR suffered a security incident just last year that exposed information about 39,000 business taxpayers.
Cybercriminals target tax records because those filings contain personal information such as addresses, bank account numbers, Social Security numbers, and employment information that can be used to conduct identity theft and financial fraud. Moreover, fraudulent tax filings can enable criminals to steal individuals’ tax refunds by filing returns in their names. In 2015, nearly 700,000 taxpayers in the United States reported being the victims of tax identity theft, the same year that two Massachusetts residents were indicted for conducting a massive tax refund fraud scheme.
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IRS anti-fraud initiatives have helped drive down the tax fraud rates since then, but tax fraud and identity theft remain serious concerns, and Massachusetts’ ..
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