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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."
How do I know that you DFTFA...
"In employment fraud, an identity thief uses a taxpayer's name and SSN to obtain a job. When the thief's employer reports income to IRS, the taxpayer appears to have unreported income on his or her return, leading to enforcement action, the GAO stated."
They don't pay someone else's taxes.
"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.
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then suddenly illegals would be prevented from voting
That's just a myth. There's no evidence this is happening. see here Best I can tell people keep bringing it up, because they're ether really stupid or know it's false and really biased. The best evidence I could find for such fraud was a 2005 GAO report (GAO-05-478) where some federal jury administrator gave estimates on the number of potential jurors claiming to be non citizens. These were pull it out of your ass numbers and not one of them was verified to not be a citizen. People will tell all sorts of lies to get out of a jury. Still, believe what you want. Liberals want lots of illegals so they can get the votes. Riiiiigh.
I am an american, and my attitude is not that it's someone else's problem. My attitude is that there's a simple solution (or at least so they'd like us to believe) but unfortunately we can't use it because the government would use the solution in ways that would be worse than the original problem. I am in fact fully aware that i suffer from the idiocy of the government, what else did you think i was complaining about?
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