Identity Theft Awareness and Update on IRS Processing of Identity Theft Victim Assistance Cases

Identity theft is a constant threat that can happen to anyone. As the saying goes: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. With the annual filing season beginning this week, it is a good time to highlight resources available to help mitigate the potential of becoming a tax-related identity theft victim. Generally, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is tasked with identity theft prevention, reporting, and recovery. The FTC annually holds Identity Theft Awareness Week, and its 2025 iteration is underway this week. For additional tax-related identity theft information, the Security Summit, a public-private partnership working to protect against identity theft fraud in taxation, recently held its ninth annual National Tax Security Awareness Week.

What Can Taxpayers Do to Protect Themselves from Identity Theft?

Knowledge is power in the fight against identity theft. I encourage taxpayers to fortify their knowledge through free offerings like the FTC’s Identity Theft Awareness Week.

Here are some tips to help taxpayers protect themselves against identity theft.

• Always use secure connections. Only share personal information over encrypted websites with addresses that begin with “https.”
• Use strong, unique passwords. When available, consider using multi-factor authentication in addition to a strong password.
• Learn to recognize and avoid unsolicited or threatening communications from identity thieves (phishing emails, texts, and social media posts). Do not click on links or downloads from communications that seem suspicious, even if they appear to be from a known sender. Scammers can pose as legitimate organizations such as banks, credit card companies, law enforcement, and even the IRS. If you have doubts, contact the agency or company.
• Protect your personal information and that of any dependents. For example, do not routinely carry around Social Security cards or leave account usernames and passwords visible to others.
• Consider getting an Identity Protection (IP) PIN from the IRS. Taxpayers can get an IP PIN for themselves and their dependents from the IRS to use as a preventative measure against tax-related identity theft whether filing electronically or by paper. More details on IP PINs can be found in my prior blog post, Identity Protection PINs: What to Know.

Please check out our TAS Get Help page on Identity Theft for more information and what to do if you suspect tax-related identity theft.

Update on Identity Theft Victim Assistance Case Processing

Sadly, each year millions of individuals deal with the consequences of identity theft in some form. It is a problem that can negatively affect many important areas of life, including taxes. Tax-related identity theft issues claim hundreds of thousands of victims every year and have appeared as topics in TAS’s Annual Report to Congress at least a dozen times over the last two decades, including as a most serious problem for taxpayers in 2023 and again in 2024. For the full discussion, see Processing and Refund Delays Are Harming Victims of Tax-Related Identity Theft.

Extreme delays in the IRS’s processing of Identity Theft Victim Assistance (IDTVA) cases over the last several years is greatly concerning because victims need resolution and finality as part of the recovery process. For tax-related identity theft victims, processing delays can cause other tax issues, such as erroneous balance due notices on subsequent years if accounts are not adjusted timely. Most importantly, processing delays mean refund delays.

The issues started in fiscal year (FY) 2021, when the IRS received an over three-fold increase in identity theft claims and cases from the prior year as fraudsters targeted pandemic-related tax benefits that were intended to provide relief to struggling taxpayers. Unfortunately for victims, the IRS has been unable to get IDTVA processing cycle times to a reasonable level ever since.

For tax-related identity theft victims whose recovery requires the IRS to work their IDTVA case, time is of the essence. For IDTVA cases in Accounts Management (AM) inventory, the processing cycle time is basically the time it takes for the IRS to receive a taxpayer’s Form 14039, Identity Theft Affidavit, research its validity, and complete all necessary account adjustments. In FY 2022, the average processing cycle time for IDTVA cases was 399 days, which rose to an average of 556 days in FY 2023 and then worsened to an average of 676 days in FY 2024. Thus far in FY 2025, the IRS is averaging 506 days for IDTVA-AM cases. It is sad that a decrease to 506 days is good news, but after years of increases, it is positive to see the average IDTVA case processing cycle times going down instead of up.

The good news is that the IRS has been working through an initiative to reduce its IDTVA inventory backlog of over 447,000 aged cases. The IRS prioritized a specific subset of approximately 45,000 IDTVA-AM cases in its backlog from prior to July 13, 2024, that reflect potential refunds for victims. So far in FY 2025, data shows the average processing cycle time for that specific subset of backlogged IDTVA cases is 515 days. Since July 13, 2024, the IRS received 5,500 more IDTVA cases that fit in the same specific subset and is averaging about 100 days to resolve the new cases. The combined average processing cycle time for aged and new cases in this specific subset is about 473 days.

This is good news for taxpayers with new cases that fit within this specific subset of IDTVA-AM cases. However, this only reduces a small percentage of the backlog. Although a good start towards closure, we continue to urge the IRS to find ways to work through its backlog of cases as quickly as possible so that victims awaiting refunds may finally receive them.

With the 2025 filing season upon us, taxpayers should take extra care to prevent identity theft. I strongly encourage taking that ounce of prevention and being overly vigilant to protect your data.

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