Banking, finance, and taxes
Are State Tax Filings Safe Again as Intuit Resumes Filing?
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Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ: INTU) announced that it has resumed e-filing of state income tax returns via TurboTax as of last Friday. The company stated that it would continue to work with states as they build their own anti-fraud capabilities.
News of suspending e-filings broke when Intuit started seeing an increase in suspicious filings and attempts by criminals to use stolen identity information to file fraudulent tax returns and claim refunds.
Intuit partnered with a third party security expert, Palantir, to conduct a preliminary examination of recent fraud activities. The examination is currently ongoing but Intuit believes that this fraudulent activity did not result from a breach in its security systems.
As a result, Intuit has implemented certain security measures to directly combat this fraudulent tax activity. One of the additional steps, or security measures, is a multi-factor authentication that has been proven to protect against identity theft.
Brad Smith, president and CEO of Intuit, said:
Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our customers’ data. We are taking this issue very seriously and from the moment it emerged it has been all-hands-on-deck. We’ll continue to remain vigilant, but I am more than pleased that we were able to resume transmission for our customers within about 24 hours.
ALSO READ: 10 States With the Worst Taxes for Average Americans
The main tax products that Intuit offers are TurboTax, Quicken and Quicken Books. These products are used to manage small businesses, payroll processing, personal finance and tax preparation and filing.
This whole situation leaves us asking is how extensive was this fraudulent activity and could it happen again. After all, there are few mechanisms in place to prevent the situation where taxpayers go to file taxes only to find out that their taxes have already been filed with a request for massive refunds.
In Friday’s trading session, following the news of the temporary suspension, Inuit shares closed down 4.2% at $87.83. In Monday’s premarket trading, shares were up marginally at $87.98. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $93.76 and a 52-week trading range of $69.02 to $95.84.
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