Tax fraud hits home

ROGERS -- Dr. Scott S. Cooper recently filed his taxes only to discover someone already had filed in his name and claimed a refund.

"It was the Saturday before Easter when my accountant called me and said he'd received a notice from the IRS," Cooper said. "We had e-filed, and it had been rejected."

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Information on what to do to prevent identity theft is available at the website http://www.irs.gov/…

Cooper, who practices at Ozark Orthopaedics in Rogers, is a victim of tax fraud. And he's not alone. False claims for refunds using an unsuspecting taxpayer's Social Security number is a nationwide problem.

"As of March 7, 2015, the IRS reports that it identified 36,674 tax returns with $172.9 million claimed in fraudulent refunds," said an April 16 report by the U.S. Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration. The report also found that another $132.8 million in attempted fraudulent refund claims were caught before the refunds went out.

Cooper said he has refiled his taxes and expects to get his refund, but warned what happened to him can happen to anyone. The notice from the IRS included a contact number for him to call if he suspected fraud. Cooper contacted the IRS immediately after his accountant told him of the problem, the doctor said.

"It took me five calls over three or four days to get through, so apparently there was a high volume of these calls," Cooper said. "Once I got through, though, the person with the IRS I talked to could not have been more helpful. She told me where to go on the Internet to download a two-page form that took a minute to fill out."

Cooper also had to file copies of identification. A driver's license would have done, he said, but he and his wife submitted copies of their U.S. passports.

"We also had to submit our income tax return by mail instead of electronically," he said. That was done by printing out a hard copy of the return he had previously filed electronically, he said.

"The truth is it's not a problem for me to get my refund, but someone has committed fraud," Cooper said. The U.S. Treasury is being bilked out of hundreds of millions of dollars and is having to spend more money to cope with these false returns, Cooper said.

He has since subscribed to an anti-identity theft monitoring firm, which already has alerted him to a credit card in his name he doesn't have.

"So I don't think the identity theft is limited just to the tax return," Cooper said.

Cooper is president-elect of the Arkansas Medical Society, a physicians group.

"There was a group of 20 of us at a board meeting recently, and I asked how many others had this happen to them," Cooper said. "Several members raised their hands."

A spokeswoman for the regional office of the Internal Revenue Service in Dallas said she could not comment on the specifics of Cooper's case, but forwarded statements by the service on the problem. The first step in protecting an identity is to closely guard Social Security numbers. The IRS advises against carrying Social Security cards in wallets, which can be lost or stolen. It advises against giving personal information over the phone and recommends buying anti-spam and virus software for computers.

Bart Allard of Allard and Co. in Rogers is Cooper's accountant. He was out of town this week, but Trish Mangold, an accountant at the firm, said she was familiar with Cooper's case and was interviewed with Cooper's permission. She said that agencies from local police to the Federal Trade Commission investigate such cases and that Cooper has agreed to share information with those agencies to aide that investigation. Cooper has also been assigned a personal identification number with the IRS that will have to be included on future filings to make sure this does not happen to him again, she said.

"I met with some accountants with a firm in Massachusetts, and they had this happen to six of their clients," Mangold said.

"It does affect all taxpayers," she said. "It holds up refunds and is an expense on everyone."

NW News on 05/03/2015

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