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."

Comments

That's too bad =P

[Daetrin]

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.

Re:That's too bad =P

[Daetrin]

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?

It's clear

[Anonymous Coward]

the solution to identity theft is to bring back REAL ID.

a big stick

[pseudorand]

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.

Re:In other news...

[dgatwood]

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.

Epic Fail

[scorp1us]

"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.

I've seen this effect

[bmidgley]

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.