This month’s guest post is courtesy of Theresa Payton, the Chief Advisor and CEO of Fortalice, LLC.

Have you ever had your credit card company reverse a charge on your card because it was not you?  Sounds reassuring, right?  Well, if you are a business owner, those same protections do not extend to you.  Cybercriminals know this!  Business owners are a prime target of cybercriminals.  The cybercriminals target your business using hundreds of thousands of computers in their control, often called bots, short for robots.

It is a business owner’s worst nightmare – Imagine logging into your business banking account to make your payroll and the balance is zero.  Unlike your personal card or bank account which are protected under a law known as Regulation E, many people do not realize that banks are not always held liable. (more…)

It seems like every day now a new figure in the government is getting into “trouble” for tax issues. I use the word “trouble” lightly because most of them are getting no more than a slap on the wrist when if it were you or I, we would certainly be feeling the wrath of the IRS. During the election, the now President Obama promised us “change” in Washington. I guess this is his definition of “change.” Never before have I seen so many tax-happy politicians skirting their own taxes. Let us review the short list. I will not go into great detail on any of them, but just list the highlights (otherwise, it would be a book – hey, there is an idea!)

Timothy Geithner.  This is one of the more publicized issues at least in the national media.   President Obama’s Treasury Secretary designate owed $34,000 in back taxes when he was selected. Geithner failed to pay self-employment taxes for several years and was busted during an IRS Audit. I don’t even begin to comprehend how this is acceptable. The man is going to be the Treasury Secretary, yet he can’t file and pay his own taxes accurately? He is supposed to be over the IRS, yet he can’t even manage his own taxes? It is beyond me how President Obama could have had such poor judgement in this selection. The fact that Geithner is the Treasury Secretary is shocking.

Tom Daschle.  President Obama selected the former U.S. Senator from South Dakota for the job of Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. It was uncovered that Daschle cheated his fellow taxpayers when he failed to disclose and pay taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars of income.   Of course Daschle was sorry about the incident after he “realized” the errors on his return.

Rahm Emanuel.   There is increasing pressure on President Obama’s Chief of Staff over Emanuel’s rent free residence of 5-years at a Capitol Hill townhome owned by Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn) and her husband, pollster Stan Greenberg. Emanuel did not pay taxes on his rent-free use of the townhouse, and he also did not disclose this on his congressional ethics forms. During the time that Emanuel lived in the townhome, he served as the Chairman of the Democratic Campaign Committee and rewarded Greenberg’s firm with massive polling contracts. Many experts agree that this “free rent” was taxable income and could have totaled more than $100,000 over the five year period. Read more on Emanuel’s tax and ethics issues here: Rahm’s ‘Rent” Is Just the Tip of Ethics Iceberg

Hilda Solis (D-Calif.).  The confirmation hearings for Labor-secretary appointee Hilda Solis were delayed last week when it was learned that Representative Solis’ husband, Sam Sayyad, had tax liens filed against him. USA Today uncovered 15 tax liens dating back to 1993 against his business. Both Solis and Sayyad deny that they knew about the tax liens and went out last week to pay them in full. See more from USA Today at Tax snafus add up for Obama team

Nancy Killefer.  President Obama’s selection for the government’s first Chief Performance Officer failed to “perform” in the payment of her nanny taxes. Unlike many of the other appointees, Killefer had the dignity to withdraw her candidacy. The interesting thing is that she only owed $947 ($298 of back employment taxes, $600 in penalties, and $49 in interest). Not a large amount, but it was enough to have a lien placed on her home. I don’t know why so many people in Killefers position keep getting hit with Nanny tax issues. Don’t they know by now that they have to pay these taxes?

Charlie Rangel.   His tax issues are almost too much to detail here. It seems every time I turn around, this guy has done something illegal. Whether the issue is Rangel receiving the homestead exemption on a home he owned in Washington while living in rent-stablized apartments in NY City or contributions or pledges made to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service or Rangel’s failure to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income on a beach house, the important thing to remember here is that Rangel is the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. That means that he is the head honcho of the committee that makes the tax law. Yes, you read that right. And he can’t pay his taxes accurately? He obviously knows the laws – he helped write them! I am not sure why Rangel is still in office. He is obviously not ethical. Why hasn’t Obama spoken up and requested that he resign for the good of the Country?

Rangel’s tax cheating has become so publicized that Congressman John Carter (R-TX) introduced H.R. 735, “The Rangel Rule Act of 2009″ which would add a new section to the Internal Revenue Code that would prohibit the IRS from charging penalties and interest on back taxes. According to the press release, “under the proposed law, any taxpayer who wrote “Rangel Rule” on their return when paying back taxes would be immune from penalties and interest.  Don’t count on this passing a vote, but it is nice to know that someone in Congress knows that Rangel is unethical and that it isn’t fair that the rest of us have to pay penalties and interest and he doesn’t.

Marion Barry.   While Marion Barry isn’t part of the Obama Administration, he is a Washington D.C. Council member.   His failure to file his 2007 taxes has resulted in a request by prosecutors to urge a judge to revoke Barry’s probation for his past tax offenses and throw him in jail. Barry’s excuse was that his kidney issues have “dominated’ his thinking and that he has been unable to get them filed. I might give the guy a break over this except for the fact that to my knowledge, he still has time to participate on the D.C. Council, and the fact that he has had chronic tax issues. I wonder if Barry is trying to get a Cabinet Appointment here? He would fit right in.

A couple of weeks ago, Politio.com asked the offices of all 99 sitting Senators to complete a short survey to say who prepared their taxes, whether and errors had been discovered on the returns they had filed, and whether they have ever had to pay back taxes. Fifty-six senators responded to the survey, of which eight stated errors had been found in the past and of which 6 states that they had been required to pay back taxes. Click here for details on the Politico.com survey.

Many fear that all of these high level tax cheats will result in taxpayers being more likely to cheat on their returns. The IRS estimates that approximately $300 billion in taxes owed each year goes uncollect every year. Seems like a good deal of this shortfall is in Washington.

Also of note is what is happening to these nominees. Many of them are actually making it through! Imagine what would have happened if Reagan or Bush had nominated these jokers. The Democrats would have never let them be confirmed and they would be back on the street. There is a good editorial on this in the Wall Street Journal: Driving Mr. Daschle

I posted something about this in a former post regarding scammers trying to steal your tax refunds, but the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) issues a new caution today regarding this, and other scams.

Most of these scams consist of e-mails or faxes requesting detailed personal information that appear to be from the IRS.

To keep it short and simple….

The IRS does not send unsolicited emails or faxes from taxpayers. If you get an email or a fax that appears to be from the IRS, it is not.

To determine what to do if you have received this type of information, follow the IRS’s guidelines here.

I do not know how many times I have gotten the annoying email from some one in Nigeria wanting me to help him and his family asking me to assist them in placing large sums of money (usually $50 million or more) into overseas bank accounts. I don’t know if I get more than the normal person because I am a CPA or if I get the same amount as everyone. Perhaps they think that I am more likely to assist them and that I may think of it as a professional engagement. Most likely, I am just part of a massive SPAM email list that they hit over and over again looking for suckers. Luckily, my new SPAM filtering system eliminates these completely. I have not recieved one since I got it installed. Previously, I was getting about eight to ten a week related to this one scam.

The FBI has had a warning against this scam on their website for a long time now. The problem is that I do not know anyone (other than a few other fraud professionals/investigators) who regularly surf out to the FBI’s website to see what scams they are notifying consumers of. We are left to other outlets to alert us to these scams. Obviously, the media isn’t doing a very good job. If these scams did not work for the perpetrators, they would not still be in existence after all these years.

I was pleased to see this morning that an Olympia, Washington woman was sentenced to two years in prison and five years of supervised release after pleading guilty to attempting to defraud U.S. citizens a Nigerian check scam. Edna Fiedler was not the Nigerian brain child of the scam. She was a U.S. citizen who replied to the email, and ultimately got sucked into it. The Nigerians would send her fake checks and money orders to cash. She would cash them and get to keep a more than fair percentage for herself, and then send the rest to the individual she was “helping” in Nigeria. When she was arrested, she had cashed $609,000 worth of phony checks and money orders. The FBI found an additional $1.1 million worth of checks and money orders that she was preparing to send out.

It looks like the FBI has at least made some headway into stopping this scam. Obvioiusly, the only thing that will stop it for good is if everyone is aware of it. Personally, I do not see why anyone would think these emails are real. Of course, we are in a money hungry society in which everyone wants a quick buck, but only a small percentage of the people are willing to put in the work to get it. Perhaps the success of this scam is more of a reflection of what many (not all) Americans have become than anything else.

Let me know your thoughts.