Bonus Benefit of Obamacare: Tax Fraud Prevention!!

Not that anyone's reading today (all eyes are on either Baltimore or the Supreme Court, with good reason), but this is a nice little ancillary benefit of the Affordable Care Act:

Dear Charles,

Thought you'd appreciate this.

Some imposter used my SSN to file a tax return this year, which I found out when I tried to e-file. I've done all the identity theft things, filed my return on paper with the identity theft affidavit from the IRS website, etc. etc. But I wondered whether the fraudster had gotten several thousand dollars out of the Treasury.

Today I got a letter from the IRS, saying they couldn't process my 1040EZ return because it didn't include the Health Insurance tax form, reconciling the subsidy I got (which their computer had matched up with my return) with the credit I was actually entitled to.

I haven't filed a 1040EZ since maybe 1975, so this was obviously the fraudulent return, not my real one. (My real one has the health insurance form on it, of course.) I was delighted that their filter matched ACA information against the return before sending out the refund. I called the IRS to let them know, and will follow up with the IRS in writing to make sure they don't send any refund.

So the fraudsters will not get their money, because they haven't figured out how to dummy up the health insurance form. Hahahahaha. Yet another benefit of the ACA!

OK, obviously fraudsters will figure out how to "dummy up" this form as well sooner or later, but for this year at least, the ACA has prevented at least one case of tax fraud. :)