If you’ve managed to stay employed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, count yourself as lucky, but identity scammers may see you as easy prey.
And you may only find out you’ve had your ID stolen when you get ready to do your taxes.
This is how the scam unfolds: You had a steady paycheck in 2020, but your state sends you a Form 1099-G for 2020 unemployment compensation you never received. Why? Because con artists used your stolen personal data to file for unemployment that the real you isn’t eligible for. Then they cashed the checks that your state sent to them.
A form 1099-G is the documentation of taxable income that’s sent both to unemployment recipients and the IRS to report how much money the individuals received and what was withheld.
“During 2020, millions of taxpayers were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic through job loss or reduced work hours,” the IRS says. “Some taxpayers who faced unemployment or reduced work hours applied for and received unemployment compensation from their state. However, scammers also took advantage of the pandemic by filing fraudulent claims for unemployment compensation.”
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 10.1 million Americans are currently out of work. The unemployment rate peaked in April at 14.7%, the highest it had been since the federal government began collecting the data in 1948.
The start of the current tax season was delayed from the traditional late January to February 12 because of the pandemic. The…
