One of the nation's leading Republican lawmakers is now trying to push a bipartisan bill that will help to fight incidents of tax-related
identity theft.
Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, recently announced his sponsorship of the STOP Identity Theft Act of 2012 in an effort to combat tax return fraud, according to th
e committee's website. He noted that occurrences of this type of fraud have roughly tripled since 2008, and nearly 1 million bogus returns were spotted by the Internal Revenue Service in 2010 alone.
The bill would make filing a fraudulent tax return an offense considered aggravated identity theft, the report said. Further, it would expand the definition of what constitutes an identity theft victim to include both businesses and charitable organizations.
Adam Levin, the chairman for Identity Theft 911, writes regularly about the problems consumers face when they are hit with this type of fraud, and what they can do to help remediate these issues in a timely manner.
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