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Is Identity Theft Overwhelming the IRS?
coondoggie writes "The number of tax-related identity theft incidents is exploding, and nowhere is that more obvious than at the Internal Revenue Service, which has seen reports rise from 51,702 in 2008 to 248,357 in 2010. While it has programs in place to fight the identity theft issue, it is also hamstrung in many other areas, according to a report out this week (PDF) from the Government Accountability Office. For example, the GAO says the IRS's ability to address identity theft issues is constrained by privacy laws that limit IRS' ability to share identity theft information with other agencies."
Illegal immigrants have figured out that if you use someone else's Social Security # and claim a few dozen dependants for your income tax withholding, or exemption from income tax altogether, you don't have to pay it or answer any pesky questions from IRS agents.
Um...No? If you're going to ask a question in the headline, expect people to answer with a 'yes' or 'no'
You know, perhaps if the government had a better track record of handling privacy issues then we would be willing to grant them exceptions in cases like this, where it actually benefits both the government and the individuals the information concerns. But we all know that if we let them share the information in this one case, no matter how specifically we worded the laws and regulations about it, it wouldn't be a week before the FBI and other agencies were trying to get secret search warrants or some other trickery to access the data for evidence of criminal behaviour.
Vernor Vinge's "Rainbows End" presented a world in which the government had "grown up" and was given unprecedented access to information in order to fight terrorism and regulate and maintain the internet, but didn't actually use that power to persecute people for minor stuff like drug offenses or to try and control what people said. I actually thought that was the most unreasonable part of the book. The tech was all more or less reasonable, but the idea that the government could actually get that much of a clue seems totally outside of reality.
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Then the IRS should stop dealing with every individual in the US, and just collect taxes from businesses. Then we could have a streamlined IRS that doesn't have to play for tens of thousands of employees.
What, are there criminals clamoring to pay someone else's taxes?
the solution to identity theft is to bring back REAL ID.
I think there will be diminishing returns from such a statagy. It assumes that people will be employed by mega corparations. But over half the U.S population is employed by small businesses not corparations. That percentage should increase as the interenet and automation remove advantages corporations enjoy. Think about book publishing. 10 years ago you book was published by a big publisher at a big retailer. Now those corporations are going bankrupt and being replaced by direct sales. An author publishing his book on Amazon isn't an Amazon employee. Ultimately the IRS has to collect taxes from the individual.
To loosen IRS privacy rules and "accidentally" let them fulfill requests for information for other purposes.
What we need is a law that allows victims of identity theft to sue companies who report that they paid wages to the victim when, in fact, they paid those wages to someone who stole the victim's identity. A special court should be set up to handle such cases, and the victim should simply need to show that they didn't actually receive the wages reported to the IRS by the company.
Companies would then be required to pay the victim all the wages they said they did, plus interest, legal and accounting costs, and any IRS fees and penalties the victim may have incurred. This way, the IRS gets their money, the victim gets his or her money back (and then some), and law enforcement doesn't have to waste tax dollars hunting down illegal immigrants that aren't otherwise criminals.
I know what you're thinking. This would hurt the legal immigrants and non-white U.S. citizens who couldn't get a job because employers weren't certain of their identity. Yes, that's an unfortunate side-effect, but imagine if some June the IRS sent a nasty reply to your tax return saying that you'd failed to report a bunch of your income. When I think about the headache that would be, fuck 'em!
Push the responsibility onto businesses, let them demand a method of verifying someone's right to work, and then don't complain when we get a national ID card with a picture and RFID chip. And don't pull out the stupid privacy argument. Of course the government already has such info on all of use. Let's make it official and perhaps the courts will get the opportunity to opine on how it's used.
"248,357 in 2010"
23,451,534 illegal immigants in the country now ( http://immigrationcounters.com/ )
Assume only 10% work (W2/W4 compliant - meaning the IRS "knows" about them), that means the IRS only has 10% of the illegal immigration in hand.
And that is assuming the "identity theft" is not the malicious "steal from you or your credit" kind.
If you don't already know, illegal immigrants use identity theft to get jobs. They need a name, SSN and birthdate. Their payroll taxes are credited to whomever legitimately owns the SSN, thereby working under that person's identity.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Home depot refused to tell us details about someone who used my wife's name and social security number to get a credit card with them. It turns out that would violate the thief's right to privacy. The local police were waiting for a "serious" crime to be committed before they would get involved.
STOP allowing companies to use your Social Security number to identify you.
It isn't a very good authenticator if the whole world knows it. And the whole world DOES know it, because everyone and his brother requires it in order to provide me with services.
Make that illegal. Restrict the use of this identifier to tax purposes only, no damn exceptions. It won't solve the problem, but it will reduce it a lot.
If they think identity theft is bad now, just wait until they start sharing info with other organizations.
If you reduce your withholding level to where you have a slight tax due (but be sure it won't exceed $500) by the end of the year, then you won't be putting your refund at risk, since you won't have one.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
A big part of me doesn't like the idea of letting the government track anyone and everyone with a common identity scheme. But the reality is that, we need to have one. There are too many holes in our current system of identity management, from people getting jobs or credit in someone else's name, to visa holders disappearing into the crowd. Sadly, I think it's time for the government to set up a central clearinghouse of identities, and for each citizen's or visitor's passport to be tied back into it. We need to have someway to prove we are whom we say we are, and at the same time protect our identities, credit histories, and even criminal history (or, especially, lack thereof) from unscrupulous people.
Ideally, this would involve the use of shared keys and two-factor authentication. Unfortunately, I don't yet know how you make something like this simple enough for every person out there to use, nor have I worked through what happens when someone forgets/loses their PIN or other authentication mechanism. This should not be taken as a working solution, but as a sky-high view on what ought to be.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Sorry did not read your heading. Your correct a simple sales tax would not add much overhead. But a complex federal sales tax would not be an improvement. The European Value Added Taxes can be expensive and difficult to impliment. There is a pontential for the goverment to micromanage things to much. You could have a situation where you track every sale and send all the data to the IRS. Where different goods and services are taxed at different rates. The IRS might actaully get bigger under a national sales tax if implimented wrong.
The identity of a proper US government has been stolen by the rouge government now running the Declaration of Independence, The US Constitution and Bill of Right into the ground in denial and suppression of the contents of these founding documents.
So yeah, there is an Identity thief problem without question....
Shills, Fools and Tax Slaves be gone.
This has been a problem since the SSA was created in 1930's.
Wallets were displayed in dept stores with a sample SSA card in them. Folks bought the wallet and not realizing the the SSA card was just an example they used them as if they were real.
80 years later we're STILL using what amounts to an insurance policy account# as both an indicator of nationality AND as a primary form of proof of personal identity.
But the economy isn't growing at 5% a year, it is at 1%, if that.
2010 GDP growth rate was 2.8%, and 2011's prediction is 3.9% now.
As for your 5% number, January 2010 GDP growth was 5%.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Someone stole my husbands SS# and name this year when we went to e-file and its been a nightmare. We are still waiting for our return (over 5 months). The e-file system needs to be changed to include a driver's license# . Right now all you need to e-file is a name and SS#. That's the problem, the IRS has made it too easy for the criminals. We had to close all our financial accounts, freeze our credit and prove our identity to the IRS. The IRS refuses to give any information to local police to try to find this scum. This has been a very frustrating experience and it seems the IRS could care less about the taxpayers but they will protect the criminals. If the IRS cannot fix the flaws in their e-file program then e-file should only be available through a CPA agency and the taxpayer needs to prove his/her identity.