IRS Identity Protection Pin, Why Should I Have One?

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0:47 Victim to a scam. Let's talk about scams. It's the must listen show for anyone who wants to protect themselves and their loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday at am Pacific time on K four HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose, and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski. Welcome back, everybody, It's April fifteenth, It's text day. How many of you out there like April fifteenth? I don't think many people do. But anyways, I'm Joyce Petrowski, your host and board president and founder of Rose Resources Outreach to Safeguard the elderly. You can find more resources on our website at Roseadvocacy dot org. You can also find our social media links, and you can sign up for our newsletters. We send one out via email and one in the mail. There are links down towards the bottom there to sign up for those the bottom of the homepage. Today, I want to talk about the IRS identity protection pin and why you should have one. It is tax day.

2:09 Tax returns are due today, but if you haven't gotten a PIN yet, you can still get one. You should go ahead and file your tax return. But because it's due today, but you can still get a PIN. You can get an identity protection pin at any time throughout the throughout the year. So what is an identity protection pin? So the I r S came up with this years ago and it's a six digit number PIN number that is confidential information. You should not share this with anybody. If you have a tax prepare that prepares and e files your tax return for you. Then they're going to have to know the number because it has to be on your tax return. But outside of that, no one else should know this number. You put it away in a safe hiding place, in a locked place with all of your other personal confidential information. And the reason the IRS came out with it, or I should say probably one of the reasons is they started to see a huge uptick in a tax related identity theft. So what exactly is tax related identity theft. Well, one of the situations with tax related identity theft is someone files a tax return in your name, in your sole security number.

3:34 It happens all the time. Now, if you had this identity protection pin assigned to you, it doesn't matter who files the tax return, whether it's someone else or even if it's you. If that return does not have your identity protection pin on it, it'll get rejected. So it's a great protection tool for your IRS account and your identity because if someone files a fraudulent return in your name and social Security number and you do have this identity protection pin and it is not on that return, that return gets automatically rejected. So it doesn't even get into your account. And I'm going to give you a little bit of some personal experience that I've had with this, And I said a little bit. But as I said that, I'm thinking it's probably going to take a few minutes, probably five or ten minutes to go through the story.

4:37 So I had found out about this identity protection PIN probably about a year ago, maybe a little longer, and I said to myself, you know, since everything I file married filing jointly with my husband, and since everything happens to be like withholdings and estimated tax payments or even if you know it all seems to be tagged to the first sold security number that's on the return, which is his. So I immediately got him one and I didn't think about getting me one. And then last summer, I think it was I was doing some more research on this identity protection PIN and one of the things they have in their frequently asked questions is why need the identity protection PIN? And yes, both spouses do need it because what affects one spouse affects the joint account.

5:37 What affects the other spouse affects the joint account. Well, Hindsight's twenty twenty, as we all know. And yes, I should have taken five minutes right then and there to get online, set up my account and get verified and get my PIN. It's a pretty quick process when you do it online. And I didn't. And so come early September and we still had not filed our tax return for twenty twenty three. But come early September, I'm going through the mail and here's this envelope from the IRS, and it's addressed just to me, And I'm like, well, that's weird. Why is it addressed just to me? You know, we've been filing joint for thirty years. And I open it up and sure enough, it's a letter telling me that they've received a tax return under my name and my sole security number, and it gives you specific instructions.

6:37 If this was you, you know, fine. If it wasn't you, well then these are the steps you need to take. And then this is where the long process started. To get my account in order. There was a phone number for tax related identity theft. If you were a victim of tax related identity theft, they have a specific phone number for you to call. So I called. I had to go through a verification process because they want to make sure they're talking to me and I get that. So I went through that process and then they did tell me that yes, there was a tax return, and you know, I asked them, can you tell me you know what address it was being sent to? And they are not allowed to give you any information about that fraudulent return. So what they did is the lucky thing for me was that the IRS had flagged that return as being possibly fraudulent, so they had not started to process it fully yet and so then I verified that it was fraudulent that we had not filed a return and verbally over the phone. But then there's this form, a tax related identity THEFT affidavit that you have to fill out, and you can do it I believe I did it, and send it in online, but you can also do it and send it in the mail as well.

8:07 And then you have to give them time to process that that form, and they did. The lady, very nice lady, did let me know on my first phone call with them to confirm that this was a fraudulent return that this whole process can take up to She said either five hundred and thirty days or six hundred and thirty days. I don't remember if it was five hundred and thirty or six hundred and thirty, but it doesn't matter. It's still a long long time in order for this fraudulent return to be taken off of our account. And like I said earlier, because I'm on a joint account with my husband, it not only affects me, it affects him because we're both on that joint account. And so I was like, okay, and she said, if you are expecting a refund, you're not going to get that refund until we have this process completed. And I went, okay, well we are expecting you know. I didn't say this to her, but talking to our tax prepair, I said, well, the refund's going to get held up, so just apply it to twenty twenty four. So that's what That's what she did, our tax prepair, and we sent our tax returns are valid tax returns in in early October, well in December.

9:34 Then I tried calling I'd given them, you know, two and a half three months, and I tried calling them, and I got someone on the phone and they started looking into it, and we got disconnected. So then I had to call back and you know, when you call the IRS, you're going to be on there's a chance, you're a good chance you're going to be on hold for a while. So I had to call back, and then I got someone who wanted to put me on hold again. And I said, now, listen, I got disconnected last time, and this I'm already an hour and a half into this process. No, no, no, no, I'm not going to disconnect you. Okay, fine, And he went and did what he needed to do, came back on the phone, you know, told me he was going to go do one other thing. And when he put me on hold that time, we got disconnected. Now whether that was my cell phone doing it or whether it was their phones, I have no idea. The bottom line is I got disconnected again. And it's a pain in the butt right because you're getting frustrated. I don't think anyone really carves out time in their day to where they're, you know, a couple hours where they're going to call the IRS and have to do something. Well, it was frustrating to keep getting disconnected. It was frustrated because it was taking up hours in my day when I had other things that I had going on. So I just said, you know what, it's December, it's the holiday time. They might be busy, extra busy. I don't know. I'm not even going to get frustrated anymore with it. I'm going to wait until after the first of the year and try

11:06 them again. Well, then a couple days later, my husband got a letter from the IRS and the Mail, and I got one from the IRS and the Mail, and it said the same exact thing. It said, the amount of your overpayment that we're crediting to twenty twenty four is zero. So we're like, okay, we have money sitting there that's owed us. We're not getting it refunded now, we're not getting it credited to twenty twenty four. So when we file our tax return for twenty four, we can't even show that in there. And if it shows we owe more money, because they're not taking that into consideration, we're going to have to pay it. And then who Like we said, we could have to wait five hundred and thirty days or six hundred and thirty days to get it back. So it ended up being probably the beginning of March. I did get a hold of the IRS, and on this instance, when I called I was only on hold for maybe five or ten minutes, so I was pleasantly surprised at that one. But the lady was very helpful. They had to verify me over the phone, which was fine. You're gonna want to have your previous years tax returns out, probably the previous two years at least out, because they're going to go back to one

12:38 of those years and they're going to want to know some information off that return that they have in their system. That's one of the things they do to verify you. They go through multiple questions and you know, if you don't pass it, they're not going to give you any information. So have those previous years tax returns. I'd even go back and maybe if you have them handy gets. You don't know how far they're going to go back. But I got verified, and the nice lady was able to tell me that they had already gone through the process and they were working on getting that fraudulent return off of my separate account. She kind of told me I had a separate account. I think when I filed the identity theft AFTA David form, they kind of put that into a totally separate account and they were able to take our overpayment from twenty twenty three and credited into twenty twenty four in our joint return. I verified that with them, and I also verified the estimated tax payments we made that they had that all listed in our joint account, and so she said, go ahead and file your twenty twenty four return the way you normally would.

13:58 So luckily for me, that only took about six months to get that handled. And I'm not one hundred percent for sure on this, but I believe that it only took six months because they hadn't actually processed that fraudulent return and put it through the system, and I'm sure it had a refund on it, you know, and paid out the money to whoever it belonged to. So I'm very thankful to the irs that they flagged it as possibly fraudulent and wanted to get some more information from me. But just know, if that doesn't happen, and that's not a guarantee that it's going to get flagged as possibly fraudulent on your account, it probably would still be going on.

14:47 We probably wouldn't have that refund credited to our account, our joint account, and you might have money sitting with the IRS that you can't get your hands on for would I say five hundred thirty or six hundred and thirty days. So the Identity Protection PIN is a very valuable protection tool for everybody, and spouses should have it as well. And they said even dependents can get it because you know, if you're I wouldn't put it past someone you know, a scammer or you know, to file a fraudulent return if they had your your dependence name and Social Security number, and you know, you might think, well, they don't even file returns. You know, how's that going to affect them? Or even you know, maybe people you know that our senior maybe maybe they don't file returns either, and you might think, well, it's not going to bother me, you know, if I don't have to file tax returns, Well, it's still on your account, your account with the IRS, and so it's still good to have one because it protects that account and at some point you're going to have to go through the process to clear that account up.

16:19 So it doesn't take that long to get one. The fastest and quickest way to get one is to do it online and you just go to IRS dot gov and there's a link in the notes in the show notes with that website address and click on apply for an ip pin or when you go to IRS dot gov. I'm sorry, go up in the search bar and put ippin and it'll take you right to the page and then click on apply for an ippin and you can do it online. And that is the quickest, fastest way to do it. And as I said before, you are going to have to verify yourself, So have your driver's license.

17:07 You know, you're going to have to upload that they I believe they use id me is what it's called. Like I said, it's been six months since I did mine, but I believe that was the website that they used. So have your driver's license handy and go through the verification process and get that pin. Now, it's going to take some time for them to mail that pin to you and for you to get it in the mail, But just know you can always log back into your account and your PIN number is going to be on your account. So as another precaution for identity theft, you're going to want to make sure that whatever device that you are logging into your IRS account with or if you have saved that pin on your device. You are going to want to make sure you have that device locked down, you have all the security measures on it, you have the anti virus, anti malware software on there, so it's always looking for malicious things and viruses and malware that are trying to take over your device twenty four to seven. It's always looking for those because, yes, it is a great thing to have for a tax related identity theft. But if you've got an infected device and you're accessing your IRS account through that infected device, and you might not even know your device is infected,

18:37 then whoever has that malware or virus on your device in the background, guess what, They're now able to see what you're doing, and then they can see your IP pins. So be careful of that. Make sure your device is always protected and always scanning twenty four to seven for those malware and viruses. Now, if you don't have access to get online, not comfortable, don't want to have to deal with getting online. To do this, you can also fill out an application for an IP PIN and that's right down there. If you you know, underget an identity protection pin, you can scroll down. Uh, well, you're not going to be on the website. So but you're going to have to find somebody that can get you that application and download it so you can fill it out and send it in. But you're going to then have to make yourself available by phone where the I r S can where either you or the IR where the I r S can contact you and you can get verified that it is you before they issue you the pin.

19:52 Now you can also uh go down to an I r S office, find out where the I r S office is in your area and make an appointment and go down there and do it in person. But you're going to want to make sure you bring the necessary documents that you need to identify yourself. So again I would go have somebody go on the IRS's website and scroll down as to what documents you're going to need to bring with you for an person appointment, or ask the person on the phone that you're making the appointment with what you're going to need. So some important information to know about these identity protection pins. They are only valid for one year, which is great, so it puts a cap on when a timeframe cap on when that pin is valid, and they will automatically send you a new pin every year in the mail. You will get a letter in the mail from the IRS that says we've a signed you a new identity protection PIN. Again, if you and and that's confidential information, you don't share it with anyone. If you don't file tax returns anymore, or you know, or if it's a dependent that doesn't file tax returns, keep that in a safe, secure place where it's not just like sitting in a file folder

21:24 where someone that might be in your fixing some fixing something you know in your house, can open it up and snap pictures of it. So put it in a safe, secure, locked place so no one has access to it. You can also, as we said, if you've lost your PIN, you can also log back into your account and it'll have it in there. You can also call the I r S and again they're going to have to verify that it's you, but they can send you in the mail. It'll be on a letter what your PIN is. But again that could take I think we got ours in the mail, maybe three to four weeks. It took before we got ours in the mail. So that's the different ways that you can apply for a PIN. And then what happens when you get it and you do file tax returns. Well, if you have someone that prepares your tax return for you, and you've signed the form with them to have them electronically file your tax return, then you're going to have to give them your PIN number because it has to be on your tax return. They're going to have to put it on your tax return before they file it electronically. Now, if you have somebody that prepares your return, but they give it to you and you manually sign it and put it in the mail,

22:55 they don't need that because when you sign the return, you're going to sign it, put the day and then right next to the date, it's going to ask for that identity protection pin, and that's where you're going to put it, and you're going to want to put it. There's a place for the taxpayer and the spouse as well. And as I said before at the beginning, if you file your return and you have one of those pins and you do not put it on your return, it's going to get rejected. And it could take some time right before you know that that return was rejected. And then if you and if it's past the deadline when it was supposed to have been filed, then guess what, you could file it and have your PIN on it the second time. But say it's after April fifteenth that you found out that it was rejected, and now it's in May or June, in your filing the return with your IPPIN on it. Well, let's past the deadline, and if you didn't get an extension, you're going to have some penalties to pay because it's a late filing penalty.

24:09 So please, please please make sure you put your ippen on your tax return. That same website that we talked about IRS dot gov, and then in the search bar at the top, you put ippin in and it'll take you right to the page. It'll give you a bunch of information about how to get an identity protection PIN, what it's for. It'll give you links to click on to get you to the application to file, to complete the application for an ippin, to send it in, request an in person request an in person authentication for an ippin.

24:53 It also has a bunch of frequently asked questions that explains exactly what an IPPIN is, who's eligible to get one, How do you do it if I can't validate my identity or access my online account? How else can I participate? What if I use an ip PIN incorrectly on my tax return? So this is what it says for that the ip PIN acts as an authentication number to validate the correct owner of the Social Security number listed on your tax return. If an ip PIN is not entered correctly on an E filed return, the IRS is going to reject the return and you'll need to enter the correct ip PIN and e file it again. If it's a paper return, If you have an ip PIN and you're the primary and or secondary taxpayer and you fail, which means you're the taxpayer or the spouse, you fail to enter your ip PIN correctly, your return will take longer to process while we validate the information. So again, it could take longer to process on that paper return if you don't have it on there correctly, or you know, they could reject it and you get notified because they couldn't validate it, and now you've got to send it in again, and is it after the April fifteenth deadline

26:26 and you don't have an extension, right, That's that's always that that could always happen because you don't know how long it's going to take them to try to validate, and then if they can't validate, how long is it going to take for you to get the letter in the mail? We mentioned it earlier. If you lose your ip pin, if you did it through an online account, you can always log in there to get it. You can also call that IRS number for the ip pins and you could ask them to send you send you your ip pin in the mail. Again, it's I think it took us about three to four weeks to get ours. Some other things. It does talk about if you're a victim of identity theft, what you need to do. Let's see, so there is a question here that says my E file return was rejected and the reject code said I need an IP pin? What do I do? So that means that you at least one of the taxpayers on that return as an ip pin and it was not entered on the return, so you need to you need to enter it on your return. One of the I'm looking at the other questions on here. We talked about where to enter it on the return. Oh, this is

27:57 a good question. Do I have to use the ip pin I received this year if I'm filing prior year returns this year So let's say you've missed filing your returns for a few years, and now this year you're making it up and you're filing all those prior year returns. But you have an ip PIN. Do I have to put it on all those prior year returns? The answer is yes. You must use your ip PIN to confirm your identity on your current tax return and any prior year returns filed during that year that you have that ip PIN. So there's another question here. I received an ip PIN for a deceased person. What do I do with it? If filing a return for a deceased person, then you do enter the pin as appropriate. We did mention that you do not reuse your pin every year.

29:06 The IRS will automatically issue you a new one. Let's see what else they have here. Oh, if you're filing an extension such as a Form forty eight sixty eight to automatically extend your tax return, or if you're filing your state tax return, do you include your pin? And their answer is no. The ip PIN is only used on federal tax forms. It's not used on your state tax forms, and it's not used on any extensions. What if you're filing an amended tax return. And these are all in the frequently asked questions that are at that on that website. And the last time I just printed these off this morning. The last time they went through an updated information on this was May sixteenth, twenty twenty four.

30:06 So it's not to say that they couldn't change the answer to these questions and then they'll put a new updated date in there, but this was updated May sixteenth of twenty four. Should I include my IPPIN when filing an amended return? Yes, The same requirements for the IPPIN that exists for filing an original return apply to if you're filing an amended return. Here's an interesting question, will I get my refund faster if I use an ippin? It doesn't. That does not affect how quickly you get a refund. That depends on your individual return information. So so the last question they have, and this was actually just updated on March eighteenth of two, twenty twenty five, can I opt out of the IPPIN program? And it says yes. If you voluntarily join the IPPIN program and have not been a victim of tax related identity theft, then you may opt out of the IPPIN program. To find out if you're eligible to opt out, go log into your online account and it says if you enrolled into the program through a one time enrollment option, you

31:37 opt out at the end of that calendar year. But once you do opt out, when an opt out selection is made, you need to allow up to seventy two hours before you're allowed to opt back in for an ip PIN, so lots of valuable information on the IRS dot gov website. In the search bar, put an I, that's I as an Indigo, p as in Paul, then pin and it'll take you right to the page and it has a lot of great information on a variety of different scenarios. But the main thing here is that everyone should have an ip PIN and if you don't have one, you can get one. You can do it online.

32:25 Set up your online account again, go to the website IRS dot gov. Type in ippin in the search bar. It'll take you to the page with all the information and just click on set up an ippin or get an ippin and you'll go through the process of setting up your online account, do the verification process, and then you'll be issued your PIN. You can also make an appointment to go to your local IRS office and you could do it there. There's a form you have to fill out. You can also mail that form in, but then you will have to be ready at some point to do a verification process, says either in person at the office or over the phone. And it really is a great protection tool because if someone files a fraudulent tax return in your name and sol security number, they do not have the PIN that is required on the return, so that return will automatically get rejected. Remember my experience with not having a PIN and having that fraudulent return being filed. I will tell you that since I was a victim of tax related identity THEFT, I automatically was issued an ip PIN. I did not have to go into the system and generate one and apply for one.

33:48 People that are victims of tax related identity THEFT are automatically enrolled in the program. So I have one now, so it will be on all of my returns from here on out. But it is a great preventative tool, protection tool. With your IRS account. A lot of people might think, well, yeah, my name's out there, but people don't have access to my soil security number. I haven't given it out one of the ways people have your soil Security number is you know the companies that are getting hacked into. You have to think about that, how many of those companies out there have your social Security number?

34:30 And then you can see how easy it is for scammers to get your social Security number. So error on the side of caution, assume your social security numbers out there and get this identity protection PIN. Trust me, it will save you a lot of time and frustration because these fraudulent returns are getting worse and worse. So thank you guys for spending your Tuesday morning with me and learning more about the IRS. Identity Protection PIN thought it was a great topic to talk about since today's tax Day, so please don't forget to file your returns or your extensions and make any payments that you need to make until next Tuesday. Don't forget to get on our website at Rosadvocacy dot org and find more resources, find our social media links, and down at the bottom of the homepage you can opt into our emailed newsletter and our mail newsletter. See you next week.

35:35 Well that's all the knowledge for this episode. June in every Tuesday at eight am Pacific time on KFOURHG Radio at kfourhd dot com as Joyce explores a variety of knowledge, so you have the power to make scam protection your healthy habit, and until then, feel free to reach out to Joyce and let's talk about scams.