AU: 23,000 Australians had their tax file numbers compromised last year

For perspective, given the massive tax refund fraud/ID theft in the U.S. Isabelle Oderberg reports:

Over 23,300 Australians had their tax file number compromised in the 2012 financial year, according to data from the Australian Taxation Office, up from 22,000 last year.

“Certainly, the delay in many tax refunds is because they have to go and do some manual checking to see whether it is a valid refund and quite often is showing up as identity fraud,” CPA Australia head of taxation Paul Drum said.