Ads by Google Ads by Google

Tax Office Mgr alleges SSI numbers are being sold

“People are selling their children’s social security number” and this is one of the biggest issues the tax office is facing. It’s wrong and it has to stop,” says Tax Manager Richard Jimmerson who also pointed out that up to 400 fraudulent tax claim cases occurred in last year’s tax season.

 

Responding to Samoa News queries, Jimmerson explained that in many cases, people are selling their child’s SSN to gain money. He further pointed out that in last year’s tax season, there were many double filings and a lot of false dependents were filed.

 

He told Samoa News over the weekend that dependency exemption tax requirements have five categories that need to be met in order for each dependent to be eligible to be claimed.

 

“If you are entitled to claim an exemption for a dependent, that dependent cannot claim a personal exemption on his or her own tax return, or be claimed by another person as a dependency exemption on a tax return in the same tax year,” said Jimmerson.

 

The Tax Office manager told Samoa News that a dependent should be a qualifying child or relative and should be living with the claimants throughout the whole year as a member of the household. “Generally, a parent may claim a married child as a dependent only if the child does not file a joint return and otherwise qualifies as a dependent” he said.

 

He further told Samoa News that generally the claimant cannot take an exemption for a dependent if the person had a gross income of $2,800 or more for the calendar year. “This gross income test does not apply if the dependent is a child, or the taxpayer is under age 19, or is a full time student under the age of 24 at the end of the calendar year.”

 

Jimmerson reminded the public that the claimant must provide more than half of a dependent’s total support during the calendar to meet the requirements. He said for Child Tax credit, the qualifying child must be under the age of 17 at the end of the year, a citizen or resident of the US, and those claimed as dependents must be young children, including step children, grandchildren, legally adopted or eligible foster children.

 

“It does not include a cousin or the child of the cousin,” said Jimmerson. He told Samoa News that his office will be monitoring all the taxes that will be filed this year and if the surnames are not the same, they will look into it.

 

The Tax manager made it clear that what occurred in the past— where there are discrepancies and the refunds were still processed— will not happen on his watch.