State Unemployment clawback has my client in tears

[Abby Normal]

She is a part time musician, part time college music teacher and plays music at her house of worship. All three stopped last spring, so she applied for unemployment. She had no income coming in. Now, MD is asking for all of her unemployment back because she got W2s and 1099s. They interviewed her by phone and decided she wasn't entitled to any unemployment.

I told her to contact her politicians and the Baltimore news stations and make a ton of noise.

Go after the fraudsters, not a hard-working mom who legitimately needed the money to get by.

[ILLMAS]

I don't know if your client is lucky, but our state has not returned calls for weeks for people who were victims of identify theft.

[Crank]

Unbelievable!

The daughter of a close friend has been trying unsuccessfully to collect unemployment since the beginning of 2021 and I believe she deserves it.

On the other hand I have had two clients that have been and continue to collect unemployment since 2020.  One is a retired 76 yr old that hasn't worked in almost 20 years.  The other is a legally blind 52 year old on social security disability that hasn't worked in over 30 years.

How do these people collect unemployment?

Also, are tax preparers under any obligation to report possible unemployment fraud?

[Abby Normal]

1 hour ago, Crank said:

How do these people collect unemployment?

Some states are of the opinion that unemployment compensation is bad and they make it almost impossible to collect. Then they like to falsely claim that their unemployment rate is low. MD is not one of those states but this clawback needs to be halted.