One of the recurring notifications our office saw this past year was unemployment fraud.
There were numerous reported cases of scammers attempting to collect the unemployment benefits being offered by the government. Such scammers were filing false claims using stolen personal information. If this happened to you, be on the lookout for a form 1099-G issued by the state unemployment agency and reporting benefits paid out to you that were actually never paid to you. Taxpayers will need to contact their issuing state agency to report the error and to have a corrected 1099-G issued noting $0 of unemployment benefits paid to them.
If this issue is not corrected, the IRS will be looking for this inaccurate amount of reported income to be included as taxable income on the taxpayer’s 2020 income tax return and will issue a tax notice for unreported income to the taxpayer if not resolved prior to filing taxes.