Menu
Tax Notes logo

Tax Return Preparers Working Remotely May Be Security Risk 

Posted on Aug. 25, 2020

The increased number of professional tax return preparers working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic may be a cause for concern from a security perspective, a panelist said during the Southeastern Association of Tax Administrators’ annual conference. 

“We have a lot of very special information and the tax information that criminals would love to get their hands on, so I think, going forward, that is really something we should address over the next 18 months,” Julie Magee, director of tax regulatory affairs at Credit Karma Tax, said August 24. 

“I think we have [done a good job], but I’ll be curious to confirm that,” added Magee, who served as commissioner of the Alabama Department of Revenue from 2011 to 2017. 

John Mollenkamp of Intuit Inc. expressed concern about payroll taxes due in jurisdictions that require payments to be made via check because there is no option for paying the taxes electronically. 

“Obviously, we’re not taking the check stock and the check printers out to somebody’s garage — there was just no way we were going to do that,” said Mollenkamp, who served as acting director of the Missouri Department of Revenue in 2016. “It was a little bit of an eye opener.”

In some areas, local governments weren’t open, so if a payment was made via check, it may have sat in an envelope for weeks, according to another speaker.

“Thank goodness, though, as an industry, we are mainly electronic, so we are better off now than we were 20 years ago,” Magee said, adding that the public health crisis may drive states to adopt legislative changes that result in more electronic options for the tax industry."

 "We do have some archaic . . . situations where a real signature is required versus an electronic [one]," Magee said. 

Copy RID