{"id":34850,"date":"2015-02-07T06:24:58","date_gmt":"2015-02-07T11:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=34850"},"modified":"2015-02-07T06:24:58","modified_gmt":"2015-02-07T11:24:58","slug":"turbotax-halts-all-state-tax-filings-due-to-fraud-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2015\/02\/turbotax-halts-all-state-tax-filings-due-to-fraud-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"Turbotax Halts All State
Tax Filings Due To Fraud Concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"CNN is reporting that; the popular TurboTax software has temporarily stopped processing state tax refund filings in all states after reports of fraud increased.<\/p>\n

Reports of an increase in suspicious filings came from a “small handful of states” this week, including Minnesota. The company has stopped processing the forms in all states as it investigates the problem, said Julie Miller, a spokeswoman from TurboTax owner Intuit.<\/p>\n

Intuit systems have not been breached, according to a preliminary investigation from third-party security expert Palantir.<\/p>\n

Instead, criminals may be using identity information (like Social Security numbers) that were stolen from somewhere else to file fake returns and collect refunds.<\/p>\n

In Minnesota, for example, taxpayers have recently found that when they log in to TurboTax, they see that a return has already been filed under their name.<\/p>\n

Miller declined to name the other states that have seen an increase in suspicious activity.<\/p>\n

“Unfortunately, the bad guys have a lot of places to get information,” she said.<\/p>\n

Just this week, insurance giant Anthem was hit by a massive data breach, where information such as names, birthdays, medical IDs, social security numbers, street addresses, e-mail addresses and employment information may have been stolen.<\/p>\n

The problem does not affect federal tax refund filings, which have had more stringent fraud controls put in place over the past year by the IRS.<\/p>\n

Despite the suspension, people can keep preparing their state returns via TurboTax.<\/p>\n

The company said it will process federal returns as usual.<\/p>\n

Intuit stopped processing electronic state returns Thursday afternoon and said it will store them securely until it can resume doing so.<\/p>\n

It was unclear Friday afternoon if the problems are more likely to happen when using the free version of TurboTax, Miller said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNN is reporting that; the popular TurboTax software has temporarily stopped processing state tax refund filings in all states after reports of fraud increased. Reports of an increase in suspicious… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34850"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}