IRS Tax Tip 2024-97, Dec. 17, 2024 The IRS and its Security Summit partners recently held the ninth annual National Tax Security Awareness Week, an annual event that emphasizes the importance of protecting sensitive financial information from identity theft and tax scams, especially as the holidays and the 2025 tax season approach. The Security Summit is a coalition of IRS, state tax agencies, tax software providers, tax professionals and others in the tax community public-private partnership between the IRS, state tax administrators, and the tax software and tax professional communities who have joined together to protect taxpayers and the tax system from identity theft-related fraud and scams. Highlights from Tax Security Awareness Week 2024 IRS warns of holiday scams: During the holiday season, taxpayers should take simple steps to protect their personal and financial information from scammers. Watch out for bad tax advice on social media: Taxpayers should be cautious against the growing threat of bad tax advice on social media that continues to dupe people into filing inaccurate tax returns. Guard against fraudsters with an IRS identity protection PIN: Taxpayers should add an extra layer of protection between their tax returns and identity thieves by joining the Identity Protection Personal Identification Number Program at the start of the 2025 tax season. Updating digital security to protect businesses, taxpayers from identity theft scams: Scammers are continually changing their tactics. Companies and individual taxpayers should review and update their security measures and practices to guard against the latest scams. Tax pros urged to guard against identity theft with updated Written Information Security Plan: Tax professionals should reevaluate security plans for protecting themselves and their clients’ sensitive information amid increasing attempts by identity thieves to steal tax data. For more information on preventing tax information theft, visit Identity Theft Central. More information: Tax scams Tax security awareness social media toolkit Taxes. Security. Together Security Summit Subscribe to IRS tax tips
