Senate Committee Approves Del. Keam's Bill to Protect Taxpayers

From the Office of the Delegate: This week, the Senate Committee on Finance unanimously passed House Bill 2113 sponsored by Delegate Mark Keam (D-Vienna), which is designed to combat identity theft used to obtain fraudulent income tax refunds.

Keam’s legislation would require employers to notify the Office of the Attorney General upon discovering that certain information about any of their Virginia resident employees have been unlawfully accessed.

According to the Virginia Department of Taxation, employer payroll breaches are one the largest risks related to identity theft and refund fraud. With information stolen from a payroll system of an employer or payroll service company, a criminal can file a fraudulent Virginia state income tax return and receive a refund before the real taxpayer files his legitimate return.

“Incidents of cyber hacking and data breach are becoming way too common, and criminals are using every opportunity to prey on innocent Virginians,” said Keam. “To give the government a fighting chance against these criminals, it’s critical that employers notify the Attorney General’s office as soon as they discover a breach of their employees’ payroll data so that the Tax Department can prevent fraudulent income tax refunds from being processed.”

The Department notes that once fraudulent returns are issued, they are usually impossible to recover and the Commonwealth loses about $800,000 per year in such fraud.

The full body of the Virginia Senate is expected to vote on this measure this week. The language of this bill is available at lis.virginia.gov.

Delegate Mark Keam (www.DelegateKeam.org, @MarkKeam) represents Virginia’s 35th House District located in Fairfax County, which includes Tysons, the Town of Vienna, Dunn Loring and portions of McLean, Oakton and Fairfax. Currently serving in his fourth term, Delegate Keam is a member of the House Commerce and Labor, Education, Finance, and Agriculture committees and the Joint Subcommittee to Evaluate Tax Preferences.

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