ALERT:

The IRS and State government recommends filing all information and tax returns and making all tax payments Electronically. This option is for the tax payers protection, not so that the government can have your information. 

A lot of people opt out of direct deposits or paying electronically because people may say “I don’t want the government to know my bank or financial information or have access to it so I’ll send them a check or have them just mail me my check.” In all honesty, if the government wants access to any of your personal information they can get it without your knowledge or consent as long as they have a reason. 

Due to the high numbers of Identity theft and fraud the best way to get your tax returns and payments submitted to the government is by electronically sending it directly to them. This way your information and payments can not be intercepted or stolen. It is not very hard these days to get a fake ID and open a bank account in another person’s name. 

This has been going on for many many years but recently 3 USPS employees who had stolen over $24 million dollars in IRS checks was finally caught in 2023 and finally sentenced. I don’t think they got enough time but they each were sentenced to estimated 60 months of prison time and 3 years of probation. They sold the IRS checks on a website called Telegram channel OG Glass House and cashed the remaining checks. If a payment is not over $10k the IRS will usually not try to go after it. 

Most people who write a check from their bank are covered by FDIC and so they can recover their money back under a certain amount and the bank will have to pursue the legally cashed check but usually it doesn’t go anywhere. When writing a check to the IRS you want to make sure you spell out the whole words and make your checks out to “United States Treasury”. If you write a check out to U.S. Treasury, IRS, etc. then it is easy enough for someone to open a bank account under another name for example Ulysses Smith Treasury and so when they cash a check for US Treasury the banks will not question them. In the past another USPS worker was caught as will with a bank account opened under the name IRS as Isaac Robert Smith and cashed another millions of dollars worth of checks and finally got caught when he became to greedy and cashed a check over $50,000. 

You do not have to be scared of the government when it comes to paying or filing your taxes and so do not expose yourselves more by being stubborn or scared. We just want our clients to be vigilant and careful so that they do not become a victim of theft. A great thing is this year we started offering all of our clients Protection Plus and all businesses also are covered under Protection Plus.