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St. Bonaventure University

Article by SBU profs traces history of IRS' Dirty Dozen tax scams

Jan 30, 2025

Darwin King, professor of Accounting, Dr. Carl Case, professor of Management, and Michael McLanahan, lecturer in Accounting, had an article published in the fall 2024 issue of the Journal of Business and Accounting, a refereed publication of the American Society of Business and Behavioral Sciences.

Since 2002, the Internal Revenue Service has compiled an annual Dirty Dozen list of common scams perpetrated against taxpayers. The SBU authors trace this history in their paper titled "A History of Dirty Dozen Frauds: How Dirty Do They Get?"

They found that the most typical frauds during the last 20 years have been various forms of identity theft and phishing schemes. During the COVID pandemic, the most common frauds involved the theft of government funds meant for deserving taxpayers. In particular, Payroll Protection Program and Employee Retention Program funds were often diverted from honest taxpayers to unscrupulous fraudsters.