You may not want to be thinking already about getting your tax forms ready for the Internal Revenue Service, but many crooks are. What can be done to protect you and to keep you from being taken advantage of? What changes does the IRS need to be making?

We talked with Shawn Novak, a public affairs professor in the College of Public Service and Community Solutions at Arizona State University. He recently served as a tax policy adviser for the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.