Tax Season Is Upon Us! Look Out For These Scams.

It’s tax-filing season, and as surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, scammers will be crawling out of the woodwork trying to take advantage of this opportunity to steal sensitive business data. Here’s how to make sure your small business doesn’t have identity thieves and con artists to contend with on top of the usual taxes and paperwork…

1. Educate employees to be on the lookout for phishers, phone scammers, and email cons. People who would never open a suspicious-looking email in their personal inbox might not hesitate to turn over your Federal Tax Identification Number and names of key executives to someone posing as a representative of the IRS. The next thing you know, somebody has stolen the identity of your business and is taking out credit cards in your company’s name.

2. Pay your taxes electronically. If you drop a check in the mail, all an identity thief needs to do in order to access your bank account number, routing number, Taxpayer ID, and other information is snag the right envelope. In contrast, the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS) is a free, secure government website that uses the highest level of security available. Every user must have a secure Internet browser with 128-bit encryption in order to access the site. To log on to the system, an enrolled user must be authenticated with three pieces of unique information known only to the user: Taxpayer Identification Number (EIN or SSN), EFTPS Personal Identification Number (PIN) and an Internet Password. That’s pretty secure.

3. Pay your taxes, period. If somebody tries to sell you a package or kit that promises to help you avoid taxes by deducting personal expenses as business expenses related to a home-based business, don’t buy it. If somebody says the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified and personal income taxes are unconstitutional, ignore them. If you own a small business, you’re responsible for determining your personal and your business tax liability – and paying accordingly.

You can reduce the likelihood that you’ll have to deal with tax-related digital cons by using up-to-date spyware detection, antivirus, and antispam software. These should help to keep all those phony emails from making it into your inbox and prevent hackers from accessing sensitive business data. Go to www.cmitsolutions.com/southnassau to find out what security services CMIT Solutions offers.