Tom O'Saben

The more nefarious one is when you get into issues of identity theft, where the bad guys, as I said, they got a match to the first four letters of the last name in the social.

I describe that as the keys to the candy store.

Now, they've gotten in.

They've probably made up information that in no way reflects your world.

four children, mid-income that would qualify for an earned income credit, college credits and all this, and they're trying to generate $7,000 to $12,000 in refunds, then the legitimate filer goes and files and it rejects.

And you have a couple of options.

One, you're probably a victim of identity theft.

and you may have to then go and paper file and you file that you think you're a victim of identity theft of course with privacy laws you really can't know who the bad guy is we'll say it that way on the other end but then you file that return in paper or there's some other options but one of the things i would suggest for folks to do and you can do that right now and you don't have to be a victim of identity theft is go to irs.gov don't go somewhere else that would charge money

And you go to get an IP pin, identity protection pin.

We in the computer world understand the notion of two-factor authentication.

It's akin to that.

So now it takes more than the first four letters of your last name in the social.

There's another number that has to match before you can get into the candy store, as the saying would be.

That's correct.

And my understanding is that, and I haven't seen this otherwise, I think you can go back and say no, but Sean, that creates a situation where then annually the IRS will actually mail to your last known address a new identity protection pin.

Because you're right, they're good for one year.

But once you get into that system, you will continue to receive those identity protection pins, not new ones each year.

And they typically are sent out in January, but that will come through U.S.

It comes down to that.

And I've often told clients they'll be in the first five minutes and they say, well, are we going to go short form or long form this year?