Happy Halloween! Here’s a spooky-but-true money fact: In the 1690s, the Massachusetts Bay Colony issued bills of credit to fund military expeditions against Canada during King William’s War. These are considered by some to be the first government-issued paper money in the Western world, backed by… the promise of future tax revenue.

Now that’s a ghost you can take to the bank.

This week’s lineup:

• Phantom Preparers: They promise magical refunds and then vanish into thin air. Here’s how to spot a ghost tax preparer before they haunt your finances.

• Financial Vampires: Silent, persistent, and ready to suck your refund dry. We expose the creatures of the financial night that are secretly bleeding you broke.

• Tales from the Tax Crypt: Forget haunted houses. We've got three true, terrifying stories of when the IRS comes knocking, featuring vanishing money and monstrous misunderstandings.

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Don’t Get Ghosted: How to Spot a Phantom Tax Preparer

It always begins with a tempting whisper, doesn't it? A friend of a friend mentions a tax preparer who’s, and we quote, “a magician.” This magician promises a monstrous refund, a figure so beautiful it could make a grown man weep, a number that seems to have descended from the heavens on a gilded cloud.

So you go. You find their "office.” The preparer speaks in reassuring tones, works with dizzying speed, and, here's the first little red flag waving meekly from the corner, asks for payment in cash.

They hand you the return, you sign it, and a few weeks later, a glorious check arrives. The magician was real! You’ve done it. You’ve beaten the system.

Then, months later, another envelope appears. This one is from the IRS. It’s thin, which is never a good sign, and the tone is decidedly less celebratory. You turn around for help, ready to consult your financial wizard ... but the office is now a vape shop. The phone number is disconnected. Your preparer has vanished into thin air.

They were a ghost. And you, my friend, have just been haunted.

How to Spot a Financial Poltergeist

These "ghost preparers" are a real and persistent menace. They swoop in during tax season, prepare fraudulent returns to generate huge, bogus refunds, take their fee, and disappear, leaving you to face the music with the IRS.

Fortunately, they have a few "tells." Think of these as the rattling chains and spooky moans of the financial world.

• They Refuse to Sign: A legitimate preparer will always sign the tax return and include their Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN). A ghost will leave the "Paid Preparer" section suspiciously blank, which is like a phantom refusing to be photographed.

• Cash-Only Operations: If they insist on cash and don’t provide a proper receipt, they’re operating in the shadows. It’s a massive red flag.

• Wild Refund Promises: If a preparer guarantees a bigger refund than anyone else before even looking at your documents, they aren't a magician; they're a liar. They’re inventing deductions and credits out of whole cloth.

• Their Fee is Based on Your Refund: A preparer’s fee should be based on the complexity of your return, not a percentage of the refund. Tying their pay to the refund size gives them a powerful incentive to, shall we say, get creative with the numbers.

The Haunting Aftermath

When the IRS comes knocking, you are the one responsible. Even if someone else prepared it, you are legally on the hook for everything on your tax return. That means you have to pay back the bogus refund, with interest and steep penalties.

Taxes are scary enough on their own. You don’t need to add an actual haunting to the experience. Work with a reputable professional who will be there long after the ink on your return is dry. Choose someone who has a permanent office, answers their phone, and isn't afraid to sign their own name.

After all, the only spirit you want involved in your finances is the spirit of due diligence.

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Financial Vampires Are Sucking Your Refund Dry

Ah, the tax refund. It’s one of the few times a year an official-looking correspondence doesn’t immediately fill you with a sense of dread. It’s found money, a little bonus from Uncle Sam, a financial shot in the arm. You’ve already mentally spent it on a vacation, a new gadget, or at the very least, a truly spectacular pizza.

But before that money even hits your account, shadowy figures are lurking, ready to drain it dry. They are the financial vampires of modern life, silent, persistent creatures that feed on your finances when you’re not looking. They don't have fangs or capes, but their bite is just as painful.

The Creatures of the Financial Night

These vampires are masters of disguise, often hiding in plain sight on your bank statements. They tend to hunt in packs and are known for their subtlety, slowly bleeding your accounts one drop at a time.

Here are the most common culprits:

• The Phantom Subscriptions: This is the ghost in your machine. The gym membership you bought in a fit of New Year’s optimism, the dozen streaming services you don't have time to watch, the "premium" app that was free for a week and has been quietly charging you $9.99 a month ever since. Each one is a tiny, persistent bite that, collectively, can cause a severe financial bleed.

• The High-Interest Debt Gargoyle: Unlike its smaller cousins, this creature is a hulking beast. It sits atop your credit card statements, growing larger and more powerful each month. It feasts on interest rates north of 20%, ensuring that even as you throw money at it, it gets stronger. It can devour an entire tax refund without even burping.

• The Sneaky Bank Fee Gremlin: These are the small, irritating pests of the financial world. Overdraft fees, account maintenance fees, and out-of-network ATM charges. They are the monetary equivalent of a mosquito, leaving an annoying, itchy spot where your money used to be.

You've met the minor ghouls draining your bank account, but the Dracula of deductions is far worse. Discover the identity of the true Vampire King and learn the secrets to vanquishing it for good.

Tales from the Tax Crypt: Three True IRS Horror Stories

Forget haunted houses and creatures lurking in the shadows. The most terrifying stories in modern America often begin not with a creak in the floorboards, but with the quiet rustle of an envelope from the Internal Revenue Service. These tales don't feature ghosts, but they are filled with vanishing money and monstrous misunderstandings.

The Seizure of Everything: The Convenience Store Owner's Nightmare

Lyndon McLellan was, by all accounts, just a regular guy. He ran a small convenience store in North Carolina, the kind of place that’s a fixture in the local community. And like any sensible business owner, he had an insurance policy. 

This policy, however, had a specific quirk: it only covered the cash in his store for up to $10,000. So, every day, McLellan would deposit his cash earnings at the bank in amounts just under that limit. It was practical. It was prudent.

It was also, in the inscrutable eyes of the IRS, a crime.

This pattern of deposits, unbeknownst to him, flagged him for "structuring" — a technique used by criminals to avoid bank reporting requirements. The IRS computers, in their infinite and often bizarre wisdom, saw this pattern and decided McLellan wasn't a cautious business owner, but a budding kingpin.

One day, without a single phone call or warning, federal agents seized his entire bank account. Over $107,000, gone in an instant. There was no evidence he’d done anything wrong. No charges were ever filed. He was, for all intents and purposes, entirely innocent. 

Yet, it took him more than two years and a mountain of legal fees to fight the faceless bureaucracy and get his own money back. The monster, in this case, was an algorithm that couldn't tell the difference between a crime lord and a guy just trying to follow his insurance policy.

You've seen what a rogue algorithm can do, but the terror doesn't stop there. Read the other true-life horror stories of an insider heist and a phantom bill that bled a business dry.

The quick (and slightly prickly) stories we didn’t have time to get to:

• After years of sending out tax notices so confusing they looked like they were written in ancient Sumerian, Congress has passed a bill forcing the IRS to use plain English. The new "MATH Act" will require the agency to clearly explain what you did wrong, where you did it, and how to fix it, a change that suggests even lawmakers got tired of fielding panicked calls from their constituents.

• The IRS has clarified who will (and won't) get a 1099-K form for selling things online. After a brief flirtation with tracking every last dollar you made selling old concert t-shirts, they’ve reverted the reporting threshold to $20,000 and 200 transactions for now. So, no, you probably won't get a tax form for reselling those Taylor Swift tickets, but the IRS would like to gently remind you that you're still supposed to report the income. Wink, wink.

• High-earners over 50 are about to see a change in their retirement savings strategy, whether they like it or not. A new rule now requires that any "catch-up" contributions for those making over $145,000 must be made to a Roth account. In short, you'll lose the immediate tax break, potentially shrinking your paycheck, in exchange for tax-free withdrawals in retirement.

• Thanks to a combination of new retroactive tax cuts and the IRS moving at its usual glacial pace to update withholding tables, many Americans are on track for a bigger tax refund in 2026. One economist predicts the collective windfall could be an extra $50 billion, proving once again that sometimes, government inefficiency pays.

Think you're a tax whiz? Prove it with our trivia question below.