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“What should you do to stop someone from using your child’s SS# to claim a tax benefit? The child nor the parents have been in the country for several years, but they have discovered someone claiming the child.”There are three things you can do:Report the identity theft to federal law enforcement, either through the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or by contacting the FBI or the Department of Justice directly.File IRS Form 14039 on your child’s behalf. This will not prevent your child from being claimed as someone else’s dependent, but it will protect your child from being improperly assessed taxes.File for a replacement Social Security number for your child on the grounds of identity theft. This will result in your child’s prior Social Security Number being flagged as having been involved in identity fraud. Any use of a flagged SSN on a tax return will result in that return being examined instead of processed automatically.You should also report the tax fraud to the IRS’s tax fraud hotline.Addendum: Expatriate US citizens are not exempt from filing tax returns merely because they reside abroad. Had you been properly filing annual tax returns (as you are required to do as a US citizen residing abroad), including your own child as a dependent on that return, the processing of your filed return would have resulted in a “duplicate SSN” exception arising during processing. This will result in all returns that claim the SSN in question as a dependent being scheduled for examination (the IRS does not treat this as a “first to file wins” situation). When you provide proof that you are the proper taxpayer to claim the child as a dependent, the IRS will adjust the other return(s) to disallow the dependent and bill the other taxpayer for the underpayment, and may also initiate fraud proceedings.It is possible that, should you attempt to report this fraud, you will yourself come under scrutiny for failing to file returns. You may want to make sure that your own house is in order before you attempt to throw stones at someone else’s.

Report the fraud by calling the IRS Identity Protection Specialized Unit at 1-800-908-4490 immediately. You will likely be asked to obtain a police report, fill out anIRS Theft Affidavit Form 14039 and send proof ofyour identity (such as copy of a Social Security Card, driver's license, or passport). More info from the IRS here Taxpayer Guide to Identity TheftFurthermore, you should file a police report and consider other identity theft measures with the credit reporting agencies, as well.

If someone has filed taxes with your social security number then you will need to file IRS form 14039 to alert the IRS.When to file a Form 14039, Identity Theft Affidavit