Above the Forms: Intuit Implements New Security to Fight EFIN Fraud

As tax professionals, you know all too well that tax fraud is an evolving threat, not only to your clients, but to the tax community as well.

The incidents of fraud have risen steeply in recent years; Intuit® is committed to ensuring taxpayers and tax professionals are protected. This continues to be a top priority for us, and as the threat of fraud evolves, so do we.

This includes rigorously monitoring our systems to detect suspicious activity. Working together with state agencies, we recently identified a new pattern of suspicious activity where fraudsters are using EFINs that we believe are registered to other IRS-authorized preparers.

In response to this new pattern of suspicious activity, we recently implemented a new security measure to:

• Aggressively monitor EFIN patterns to help us more proactively prevent the systematic misuse of EFINs.
• Require additional validation of tax preparer identity before efiling.

While we realize the additional validation requires you to take an extra important step as part of the efiling process, we feel is it critical to ensuring you are protected.

In fact, we will continue to do all we can to ensure that our products, your information and your clients’ information are safeguarded at all times. This includes reporting all suspicious patterns and activity, and also working closely with the IRS, states and industry to facilitate additional, industry-wide standards and solutions. It also means partnering with you to mitigate risk for both you and your clients.

Stay tuned for more updates and know that we remain vigilant year round in implementing additional security measures to keep fraudsters on their heels, and you, and your clients, protected.

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