Q: Does the IRS pay billions in tax refunds to workers who are in the U.S. illegally?

A: Yes. The Treasury Department’s Inspector General determined that $4.2 billion was paid in 2010, up from less than $1 billion in 2005. Leading Democrats are resisting a bill that would stop future payments.

Q: Did President Obama secretly sign a law that makes it a crime to protest against him or ask him a question he doesn’t like?

A: No. He openly announced the signing of a bill overwhelmingly passed by Congress that slightly revises a 1971 law against trespassing into areas under Secret Service protection.

Q: Is the National Association of Realtors lobbying to repeal a 3.8 percent “sales tax” on homes before it takes effect in 2013?

A: No. There’s no such “sales tax” in the new health care law. And Medicare premiums aren’t going to $247 either. But these virulent falsehoods keep going around.

Q: Did an emergency-room physician in a Tennessee hospital say the new health care law is currently denying dialysis to some Medicare patients, and will deny care to those over 75 in 2013?

A: No. A spokesman for the hospital says the doctor never said the things attributed to her in a chain email, and they are not true. A guest in the doctor’s home fabricated the account.

Q: Is President Obama giving away several Alaskan islands to Russia?

A: No. The U.S. has never claimed ownership of the islands identified in viral emails and websites. They lie far closer to the coast of Siberia than to Alaska.