Higher education institutions, including UC Davis, have increasingly become a target of fraudulent W-2 phishing emails in recent weeks. This increase is typical during tax season, from January to April, but the problem has gotten worse over time.
In 2023, the IRS identified 1.1 million potentially fraudulent tax returns and 12,617 of them were confirmed to be fraudulent — a 31 percent increase from the 9,626 fraudulent tax returns in 2022.