Tax Season Scams Are Starting Early. Here's the One That Hits Small Businesses First.

Tax Season Scams Are Starting Early: What Las Vegas Small Businesses Need to Watch First

It's February. Tax season is ramping up. Your accountant is busier. Your bookkeeper is pulling reports. Everyone's thinking about W-2s, 1099s, and deadlines.

Here's the part no one schedules time for: the first real tax-season problem usually isn't a form.

It's a scam.

For SMBs across Las Vegas — from professional services and medical practices to construction firms and hospitality companies — tax season is already busy. And scammers know exactly when payroll teams are distracted.

And there's one that shows up long before April because it's simple, believable, and aimed squarely at small and mid-sized businesses. There's a good chance it's already sitting in someone's inbox at your Las Vegas office.

The W-2 Scam: How It Works

Here's the setup.

Someone inside your company — usually whoever handles payroll or HR — receives an email that looks like it came from the owner, CEO, or a senior leader.

The message is short. Urgent. Familiar.

"Hey, I need copies of all employee W-2s for a meeting with our accountant. Can you send them over ASAP? I'm slammed today."

It looks normal. The tone sounds right. February is busy, so the urgency feels reasonable. The request doesn't seem suspicious.

So the employee sends the W-2s.

Except the email wasn't from the CEO.

It was sent by a criminal using a spoofed address or a look-alike domain.

And now that criminal has every employees':

• Full legal name
• Social Security number
• Home address
• Salary information

Everything needed for identity theft. Everything needed to file fraudulent tax returns before your employees do.

What Happens Next

Here's how businesses usually find out.

An employee files their tax return — and it gets rejected.

"Return already filed for this Social Security number."

Someone already submitted a return in their name. Someone already claimed the refund. Someone already took the money.

Now your employee is dealing with the IRS, credit monitoring, identity theft protection, and months of paperwork — all because of a document they didn't even realize they sent.

Now multiply that by your entire payroll.

Then imagine explaining to your team that their personal information was exposed because someone fell for a fake email.

That's not just a security issue.
That's a trust issue.
An HR nightmare.
A potential legal problem.
And a serious reputation hit for your business.

Why This Scam Works So Well

This isn't a sloppy phishing email. At first glance, it looks legitimate.

It works because:

The timing is perfect.
W-2 requests are expected in February. No one questions why someone would ask for them now.

The request is reasonable.
It's not "wire $50,000" or "buy gift cards." It's something that actually does get shared during tax season.

The urgency feels normal.
"I'm slammed today — can you send this quickly?" doesn't raise alarms in a busy Las Vegas office.

The sender looks legit.
Criminals do their homework. They know the owner's name. Sometimes they know the accountant's name. They make it believable.

Employees want to be helpful.
Especially when the request appears to come from the boss. Urgency overrides verification.

How To Protect Your Business (Before This Hits)

The good news: this scam is very preventable, and that prevention relies more on policy and culture than expensive technology.

1. Make a "no W-2s via email" rule. Period.
No exceptions. W-2s and sensitive payroll documents do not get sent through email attachments. If someone asks via email — even if it looks like the owner — the answer is no.

2. Verify sensitive requests using a second channel.
Phone call. In person. Internal chat. Anything except replying to the email. Use contact info you already have — not what's in the message. It takes 30 seconds and can save months of cleanup.

3. Hold a 10-minute tax-scam huddle now.
Not later. Not "closer to April." Tell payroll and HR: "These scams are about to spike. This is what they look like. This is what we do." Awareness is cheap insurance.

4. Lock down payroll and HR systems.
Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) on anything that touches employee data. If credentials get phished, MFA is the last barrier criminals have to break.

5. Make verification part of your culture.
The employee who double-checks a request from the CEO should be praised — not made to feel paranoid. When questioning is encouraged, scams fail.

That's it. Five rules. Simple enough to implement this week. Strong enough to stop the first wave.

The Bigger Picture

The W-2 scam is just the opening act.

Between now and April, Las Vegas businesses should expect a surge of tax-themed attacks, including:

• Fake IRS notices demanding immediate payment
• Phishing emails posing as tax software updates
• Spoofed messages from "your accountant" with malicious links
• Fraudulent invoices timed to look like tax-related expenses

Criminals love tax season because everyone is distracted, moving fast, and financial requests don't feel unusual.

Businesses that get through tax season clean aren't lucky.
They're prepared.

They have policies.
They have training.
They have systems that catch suspicious requests before they turn into disasters.

Is Your Business Ready?

If you already have clear policies in place and your team knows what to watch for, that's great — you're ahead of most small businesses.

If not, now is the time. Not after the first scam hits.

If this sounds like your business, book a 10-minute discovery call and we'll review:

• Payroll and HR access and MFA
• Your W-2 verification rules
• Email protections that catch spoofing
• The one policy tweak most businesses overlook

If it doesn't sound like you, that's great. But odds are you know a Las Vegas business owner it does sound like. Forward this article to them — it could save them a very expensive headache.

Book your 10-minute discovery call here.

Because tax season is stressful enough without identity theft on top of it.

Author: Sean Connery, CEO in Las Vegas