Cullman Times. April 18, 2024.

Editorial: Scammers make April a more taxing month

April is tax month, though for many of us that little chore is now history. But April is also Financial Literary Month, and the Atlanta Field Office of the IRS Criminal Investigation unit is using the time to shed light on imposter scams.

Imposter scams were the No. 1 top fraud category in 2023, the Federal Trade Commission reports — which is why the IRS is getting involved. With tax season, scammers posing as IRS personnel are working overtime, vastly increasing their call volume to potential victims while the getting is good — for the scammers.

This is why agents from the field office remind us that the IRS will not call taxpayers to demand an immediate payment. Also, the agency will not call about taxes owed at all without first sending the person a bill.

But phone calls are only one way scammers operate. In addition to those calls, scams involving the impersonation of the IRS usually take the form of e-mails, tweets or other online messages to taxpayers. The FTC released data in February 2024 showing that consumers reported losing more than $10 billion to fraud last year. According to the FTC, imposter scams lost victims $2.7 billion to criminals.

Taxpayers are advised to follow the tips below should they be contacted by a suspected scammer:

Phone calls

- Do not give out any information. Hang up immediately.

- Contact the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to report the IRS impersonation scam call.

- Report the caller ID and callback number to the IRS by sending it to phishing@irs.gov. The subject line should include “IRS Phone Scam.”

- Report the call to the Federal Trade Commission.

Receiving email claiming to be from the IRS

- Don’t reply.

- Don’t open any attachments. They can contain malicious code that may infect your computer or mobile phone.

- Don’t click on any links. Visit our identity protection page if you clicked on links in a suspicious email or website and entered confidential information.

- Send the full email headers or forward the email as-is to phishing@irs.gov. Don’t forward screenshots or scanned images of emails because this removes valuable information.

- Delete the original email.

CI is the law enforcement arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code. The Atlanta Field Office covers the states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

If you feel you’ve been involved in a scam, don’t hesitate ... reach out. Contact the Atlanta Field Office at atlantafieldoffice@ci.irs.gov.

___

Decatur Daily. April 20, 2024.

Editorial: Bill would put deadlines on open records requests

On paper, the state of Alabama has one of the most expansive open records laws in the nation. It says any citizen has the right to inspect and take copies of public writings, except for those exempted by law.

But in practice, Alabama’s law is one of the worst, because it’s essentially toothless.

State and local agencies can stall requests for information almost indefinitely, and ultimately members of the public and news organizations — usually the latter — have to sue in order to gain access to records that are supposed to be public as a matter of law.

That’s because Alabama’s current open records law doesn’t say when public agencies have to respond.

“It takes an average of 188 days for state agencies to respond to open records requests, according to MuckRock, a nonprofit organization that focuses on open government,” reports the nonprofit news and politics site Alabama Reflector. “The organization says there is only a 16.29% success rate for obtaining public records.”

In other words, the attitude of most state and local government bodies is, “Sure, you can have what you want, when we get around to it.”

It’s no wonder, then, that according to Al.com, “a 2019 study by a researcher at the University of Arizona ranked Alabama last among states in responsiveness to requests for records.”

But a bill filed by state Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, which this week passed the state Senate unanimously, would change that.

“The legislation would require a public records officer to acknowledge the receipt of a simple request within 10 days and then ‘provide a substantive response’ to the request within 15 additional business days,” according to The Associated Press’s summary “Public entities would be given more time to respond to requests that would require more than eight hours of work to fulfill.”

A request would be presumed denied if there is no response within 30 business days or 60 calendar days, although agencies could get extensions for time-intensive requests, provided they provide written notification to the requester. Afterward, a denied party could file suit.

“This bill establishes timelines and creates a framework for the public to make requests for public records. It also provides guidelines for the custodians of records in fulfilling the requests,” Felicia Mason, executive director of the Alabama Press Association, wrote in an email to The AP.

Unfortunately, filing suit is still the only enforcement mechanism under the bill. Previous legislation that Orr sponsored unsuccessfully would have created a board to deal with denied requests without forcing those denied to resort to expensive and often time-consuming litigation.

It also doesn’t address the issue of law enforcement bodycam video, which local and state agencies still withhold for the most frivolous of reasons.

On that score, the state Senate seems unwilling to budge. The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday voted down a proposal that would have made most law enforcement dashboard and bodycam videos public record and widely distributable within 30 days.

The secrecy surrounding bodycam and dashcam video has become a particular flashpoint since a Decatur police officer shot and killed Decatur resident Steve Perkins last year and a Huntsville police officer shot and killed a suicidal man in 2018.

Orr’s bill now goes to the state House of Representatives, which we hope will act quickly to pass it.

The Issue Legislation that passed the state Senate this week and now awaits action in the state House would hopefully deter state and local government bodies from stalling open records requests.

END