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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."
One more reason we need immigration reform. There needs to be a sane guest worker program that will help us get a handle on this problem.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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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the solution to identity theft is to bring back REAL ID.
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.
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.
I'd love to see every little law enforced. Maybe if Congresspeople were regularly fined hundreds of dollars for doing laundry on Thursday, we'd see a return to a more sensible corpus of legal code that is small enough for an ordinary person to understand it, and in which old, stale, useless laws are regularly pruned to make room for newer, more relevant laws.
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"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.
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.