In-brief: Experian Vice President of Data Breach Resolution tells The Security Ledger that tax ID fraud linked to stolen W-2 forms is up 25% this year, just the latest trend in a long running problem securing tax returns from scammers. But what’s the solution?
In-brief: A massive leak of sensitive client data from a Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, has sent shockwaves around the world: exposing shell companies and other tax havens set up by the wealthy, elected officials and celebrities.
In-brief: Hackers believed to be responsible for a wave of tax identity theft scams got a rude awakening last month: a whopping bill from the IRS. A common mistake in their fraudulent filings appears to be the cause.
In-brief: OPM and IRS are just the latest incidents to expose the dire state of federal information security practice. The question is: why?
Beware you barrons of BitCoin – you World of Warcraft one-percenters: the long arm of the Internal Revenue Service may soon be reaching into your treasure hoard to extract Uncle Sam’s fair share of your virtual treasure. That’s the conclusion of a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on virtual economies, which found that many types of transactions in virtual economies – including bitcoin mining and virtual currency transactions that result in real-world profit – are likely taxable under current U.S. law, but that the IRS does a poor job of tracking such business activity and informing buyers and sellers of their duty to pay taxes on virtual earnings. The report, “Virtual Economies and Currencies: Additional IRS Guidance Could Reduce Tax Compliance Risks” (GAO-13-516) was released this week. It was prepared in response to a request from the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, which asked GAO to look into virtual […]
