KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Tucked away at the bottom of the January 2023 General Revenue Report, the Missouri Office of Administration said Missouri had been targeted in a multi-million dollar “fraud scheme.”
The state didn’t offer much detail about the scheme other than the note in a Feb. 8 email: “The growth rate for individual income tax is artificially high due to an individual fraud scheme. The fraudulent payments will be reversed during February 2023.”
Missouri reported a 14.5% increase in individual income-tax collections and a 21.5% jump in corporate income- and franchise-tax collections year-over-year in January 2023.
The state provided a little more context Friday in a news release for the February 2023 General Revenue Report.
It said the fraud scheme “attempted to make fake income tax payments from fake bank accounts with the intent to trigger a refund in the Department of Revenue's payment system,” according to an email from the Missouri Office of Administration.
The fraudulent payments from January were reversed February, which resulted in a a 0.8% drop in individual income-tax collections and 13.9% decrease in corporate income- and franchise-tax collections from month to month.
Missouri officials called those growth rates “artificially low” as a result of the attempted fraud scheme, but stressed that no taxpayer dollars were ever sent to the perpetrators.
“The Department of Revenue's Taxation Division confirmed that no Missouri taxpayer money was lost,” State Budget Director Dan Haug said.
Law enforcement has been contacted about the scheme.
The Missouri Department of Revenue did not respond to a message from KSHB 41 for more information about the scheme, which attempted to dupe the state into issuing $118 million in fraudulent refunds, according to the Missouri Independent and other media outlets reported.
—
