Tax software company TurboTax paused state filing amid growing concerns of tax fraud. The state of Minnesota actually stopped accepting tax filings prepared using TurboTax. The company worked with a third-party security expert Palantir to examine fraud activities and has since resumed filing state taxes according to a blog post earlier today. Federal tax filing was not impacted
A number of people reported attempting to file their taxes but being told that their 2014 taxes have already been filed. Upon investigation of the previous filing, one victim shared, that they were told the filing took less than 3 minutes to complete and used information from previous years that TurboTax pulls up to save data re-entry.
To assist any customers who believe they are victims of tax fraud, Intuit has implemented a plan that includes a dedicated toll-free number, 800-944-8596, with direct access to specially trained identity protection agents who will provide comprehensive support and filing assistance. In addition, Intuit will provide identity protection services and free credit monitoring, as well as provide access to all versions of its software or to the assistance of one of Intuit’s credentialed tax experts who will prepare taxes for affected customers at no expense.
After their preliminary examination with Palantir, Intuit believes there was no security breach of their systems. Instead, malicious actors were using stolen identity information from other sources to file for tax returns.
Along with resuming transmission of state tax filings, Intuit TurboTax also implemented multifactor authentication to combat the fraud acts that they were seeing across their systems.
