Internal Revenue Service

Tax Scams and Schemes During the 2016 Tax Return Filing Season Internal Revenue Service

TIGTA's Office of Investigations (OI) protects the integrity of the IRS by investigating allegations of IRS employee misconduct, external threats to IRS employees and facilities, and other attempts to impede or otherwise interfere with the IRS's ability to collect taxes. Specifically, OI investigates misconduct by IRS employees which manifests itself in many ways, including unauthorized access to taxpayer information and the use of the information for the purposes of identity theft; extortion; theft of government property; Section 1203 taxpayer abuses; false statements; and other financial fraud. For example, as will soon be reported in our upcoming Semiannual Report to Congress, in the past six months, TIGTA investigations resulted in Federal prosecution action on six IRS employees whose criminal activity impacted over 240 taxpayers and cost the Government the payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent refunds. Although the six IRS employees involved in this criminal activity represent a very small percentage of the total IRS employee population, their actions negatively impacted the public's perception of the integrity of the Federal tax system; therefore, allegations of IRS employee misconduct will remain one of our primary investigative priorities.