Duplicate Filing

[cpahispano]

Practitioner in Drake Forum already received a duplicate filing acknowledgement... Probably filed by last year "ID Theft Experts" any of you receiving duplicate acknowledgement from IRS. By the way some returns are already being accepted by IRS...

[David1980]

Yeah, they usually do a controlled launch / early e-file test where some returns get sent earlier. I think it fell to the 24th-27th this year (though was originally planned earlier obviously)? I would guess the identity theft fraud will be trying to get as many returns sent in as early as they can so they beat the real owner of the ssn. Same way separated parents may race to file the return to get the kids before the other one...

[ChEAr$]

Practitioner in Drake Forum already received a duplicate filing acknowledgement... Probably filed by last year "ID Theft Experts" any of you receiving duplicate acknowledgement from IRS. By the way some returns are already being accepted by IRS...

Very interesting. IRS has a batch of returns already sent by Drake in a special dispensation to allow IRS to validate it's processing systems, HOWEVER... none of those returns will be fully processed until the Jan 30th launch date. Thus IRS is now put on notice that there are two filers using same SSN and can nip one of those in the bud. Or so I hope.

[Burke]

They should do this every year. The vast majority of fraudulent returns involve the EITC or other refundable credits. If they would automatically hold these up to a later filing date, it might help this problem go away. I know....fat chance. The ultimate solution is to REMOVE the EITC from the tax code and put it where it rightfully belongs.

[David1980]

Very interesting. IRS has a batch of returns already sent by Drake in a special dispensation to allow IRS to validate it's processing systems, HOWEVER... none of those returns will be fully processed until the Jan 30th launch date. Thus IRS is now put on notice that there are two filers using same SSN and can nip one of those in the bud. Or so I hope.

I think the not processing just means the "up to 21 days" clock starts ticking at Jan 30th rather than ack date. It would be a good idea to have something in place, when a second return gets rejected for being a duplicate if the first return hasn't been paid out pull it and review. I know the IRS has difficult issues though, I mean, on the one hand there's the pressure to release refunds as soon as possible. I don't think there's a tax forum in existence that there haven't been threads complaining about how long it takes the IRS to issue refunds. On the other hand, we want them to catch all identity theft, which causes delays. It will be interesting to see if their fraud filters are better this year. Identity theft returns can still get acknowledged (if the taxpayer doesn't have an IPPIN yet), so what should happen is the refund never gets paid out on the accepted fraudulent return. We shall see.