The Child Tax Credit program can often lead to fraudulent cases where people claim to be you and claim the payment as a dependent. There are several important steps that one would need to take if this particular situation arises. Incidentally, this has already happened to people when they filed for their return and received a message where it was clearly written that someone else had filed and claimed the dependent payment from them.
In this particular case, one would need to verify if the information entered was correct regarding the dependent that had been claimed. There are often certain cases where one entered incorrect information for the dependent. All one would need was to write down an incorrect letter or number from the last name of the dependent.
Child Tax Credit Scam- What To Do?
As it stands, federal privacy laws don’t allow the IRS to inform one if someone had claimed their dependent. Rather, they will only be allowed to disclose this return information if the victim was listed as a primary or secondary taxpayer on the fraudulent return. If one had no knowledge of the other person who could have been claimed as a dependent, this dependent could be a victim of the child tax credit identity theft.
There are, interestingly, three separate steps that an individual can take in order to find the identity of the individual. This can also be verified through the IRS’ Taxpayer’s Guide to Identity Theft, which one would be able to find on the official website of the IRS.
First, one would need to file a paper return once they have confirmed their own eligibility. Second, they would also need to prove that they were entitled to claim their dependent. And finally, they would have to answer the IRS when they decided to contact them regarding the status of their Child Tax Credit payment.
