Financial Safety During Holiday Season

With the holidays and tax season approaching, we remind taxpayers and tax professionals to take extra steps to protect their financial and tax information. People face a heightened risk in coming weeks as fraudsters take advantage of the holiday season to trick people into sharing sensitive personal information by email, text message and online. Identity thieves use that information to try to file tax returns and steal refunds.

Fraudsters may mimic the IRS, NCDOR, and others in the tax community through fake calls, emails, texts and online scams. These schemes also frequently use recent tragedies or charitable groups to coax people into sharing sensitive financial data.

We remind people to take these basic steps when shopping online:

• Use security software for computers and mobile phones – and keep it updated.
• Make sure anti-virus software for computers has a feature to stop malware, and that there is a firewall enabled that can prevent intrusions.
• Use strong and unique passwords for all accounts.
• Use multi-factor authentication whenever possible.
• Shop only secure websites; look for the "https" in web addresses and the padlock icon; avoid shopping on unsecured and public Wi-Fi in places like coffee shops, malls or restaurants.

Additional resources

In addition to reviewing IRS Publication 4557, Safeguarding Taxpayer Data, tax professionals can also get help with security recommendations by reviewing Small Business Information Security: The Fundamentals by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The IRS Identity Theft Central pages for tax pros, individuals and businesses have important details as well.