How to avoid fraud during tax season?

There are many aspects that businesses need to keep in mind during the tax season and staying away from frauds is one of them. Every year, many businesses fall prey to frauds and scams and these results in a disaster for a firm. All the businesses that succumb to frauds and scams suffer multiple losses and that’s why it becomes very important to take necessary steps in order to stay away from scams and frauds during the tax season.

With the advancement of technology every year, criminals and evil minded people are also evolving.  Every year, the ways of scamming businesses and people keep on changing and that’s why using the same precautionary measure, again and again, is not going to work every year. You need to keep on shaping your steps according to the latest scams and frauds in order to stay away from the trap of criminals.  Therefore, in this blog post, we are going to talk about some of the important tips which a business can use in order to stay away from frauds and scams. 

1. File as soon as possible

Most of the people start working on their tax filing just before the deadline.  Such a practice will not only make tax filing hectic and prone to errors but it will also increase the chances of falling into traps set by scammers and other evil minded people. It has been seen that all the people who filed their taxes just before the deadline were more vulnerable to scams and frauds. The criminals, after getting their hands on your tax information, can use it for illegal purposes.

Filing taxes early will stop criminals from getting ahead of you and that’s how you will easily minimize the chances of getting scammed. Many criminals file a fake tax return on the chance that they are doing so before you but if you will file taxes as soon as possible then the whole tactics of criminals will go in vain. 

2.Using cloud hosted solution

Another important thing which all the businesses should do while filing taxes is to use a cloud hosted tax software instead of using any other traditional solution.  Even IRS now motivates people for filing e-returns as filing taxes on pen and paper makes it easier for criminals to get their hands on your sensitive business data. The cloud hosted tax and accounting software solution like ATX tax software hosting  or QuickBooks desktop hosting  comes with various layers of safety and security like multi factor authentication, encrypted data, anti-virus system, anti malware system and firewall protection.  All these security layers make your tax filing process ultra-secure and you are able to stay away from each and every type of scams and frauds. 

Shifting your desktop installed tax software to cloud is very easy and economical as well. All you need to do is to choose a cloud hosting provider and then they will take care of the rest. Choosing a good cloud hosting provider is very necessary in order to unlock the power of cloud while working on the same interface.

3.Stay away from the phishers 

One of the most common ways used by criminals to get their hands on your data is by phishing expeditions. The criminals will act as IRS or tax payer employee and then they will send email messages or make phone calls soliciting sensitive information like W-2 forms, or any other personal information from the target. According to the data of IRS, the number of phishing emails increased to 60 percent in the last year and that poses a serious threat on each and every type of businesses.

The schemes used in phishing generally involve fat refunds or threaten penalties for taxes owed. In the dirty dozen tax scams list issued by IRS, phishing tops the list. In some cases of phishing, criminals look for personal information of the person for identity theft.

In the modern day world it is very necessary to stay away from each and every type of fraud during the tax season otherwise your business can get into huge trouble.  Falling prey to such scams will not only cause you trouble in filing taxes but you will also face penalty because of it.