Tax ID theft - state rankings

Take this for what it's worth, but Consumer Affairs reported on which states that it found had the highest tax-related identity theft problems. Unfortunately, North Carolina was number seven ! (To my New Jersey folks: NJ was not in the top ten, but NJ was not the bottom ten either).

Note that we are talking about "tax-related", which typically means that a bad actor obtains a social security number and proceeds to use it to file a return and claim false tax refunds.

Be very careful to guard your social security number; for example, do not email any documents that contain it. I always encourage my clients to utilize my portal to upload documents with tax-sensitive information on it.

Although nothing is 100% fool proof, let's all minimize the risk. Criminals tend to go after the low hanging fruit, so don't make identity theft against you easy for them !