 TITLE: How Common is Tax Identity Theft? CONTENT: Tax identity theft is generally less common than other types of identity theft and fraud, such as someone stealing and using your credit card account or opening a new credit account using your identity.\nTax identity theft has also decreased in prevalence over the past few years. In part, this is due to a joint effort by the IRS, state tax agencies, private tax preparation companies, tax professionals, payroll processors and financial institutions. Together, they formed a Security Summit in 2015 to fight refund fraud—which is often perpetrated by organized crime syndicates.\nFrom 2015 to 2019, there was an 80% decline (677,000 to 137,000) in the number of taxpayers who filed IRS identity theft affidavits—a form you attach to your tax return if you're the victim of tax identity theft. For context, the IRS processed 155,611,000 returns from individual taxpayers in 2019, as of December 27 of that year.\nIn addition to responding to taxpayers who report being victims of identity theft, the IRS actively identifies suspicious returns. It then reaches out to taxpayers to confirm their information before continuing to process the return. In 2019, the IRS says it stopped 443,000 confirmed fraudulent returns (which would have resulted in $1.9 billion in refunds) from being processed.\nEmployment or tax-related fraud did see an increase in 2020, according to the FTC, but the number of fraud reports remains below 2016 levels. Several other types of fraud also saw increases from 2019 to 2020, with the increase in government benefit fraud especially dramatic. END