People counting on a quick windfall will discover they instead are victims of an audacious gang of online criminals who systematically targeted TurboTax, the nation’s largest online filing service. The attacks highlighted the perilous security of the nation’s overstretched systems for online tax collection. A massive spike in the use of services such as TurboTax has coincided with deep cuts to the Internal Revenue Service, which along with state taxation authorities has struggled to adapt to the rising sophistication of online criminals. As fraud rises sharply — Intuit, which makes TurboTax, said some states have seen a 37-fold increase in suspicious returns this year — it remains unclear who is responsible for combating the problem.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2015/03/04/unprecedented-surge-in-online-tax-scams-raises-questions-about-turbotax/