Last month the Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee issued its annual report to Congress. ETAAC was born in the 98 Restructuring Act; it is an advisory committee that is made up of a number of volunteers from the private sector, consumer advocacy groups and state tax administrators. As I discuss below, the report considers e-filing and refund fraud and identity theft issues.
When formed in 98, ETAAC’s mission was principally directed at IRS reaching an 80% rate of electronic return filing; this year’s report details the substantial progress in meeting that target, though there is a range in e-filing that is based on type of return. For example individual income tax returns are e-filed at around 88%; exempt org returns are in the mid-60% range. ETAAC projects this year that the overall electronic filing for all returns will exceed 80%.
A Shifting Focus to Refund Fraud and Identity Theft
With ETAAC essentially fulfilling its primary mission, last year its charter was amended to include the problem of Identity Theft Tax Refund Fraud (ITTRF), which, as the report states, threatens to undermine the integrity of our tax system:
America’s voluntary compliance tax system and electronic tax filing systems exist, and succeed, because of the trust and confidence of the American taxpayers (and policy makers). Any corrosion of trust in filing tax returns electronically would result in reverting back to the less-efficient and very costly “paper model.” That option is neither feasible any longer nor desirable.
The report discusses the IRS’s convening of a Security Summit and last year’s special $290 million appropriation to “improve service to taxpayers, strengthen cybersecurity and expand their ability to address identity theft.” The main goals relating to ITTRF include educating and protecting taxpayers, strengthening cyber defenses and detecting and preventing fraud early in the process.
The report discusses a number of ITTRF successes in the past year:
- From January through April 2016, the IRS stopped $1.1 billion in fraudulent refunds claimed by identity thieves on 171,000 tax returns; compared to $754 million in fraudulent refunds claimed on 141,000 returns for the same period in 2015. Better data from returns and information about schemes meant better filters to identify identity theft tax returns.
- Thanks to leads reported from industry partners, the IRS suspended 36,000 suspicious returns for further review from January through May 8, 2016, and $148 million in claimed refunds; twice the amount of the same period in 2015 of 15,000 returns claiming $98 million. Industry’s proactive efforts helped protect taxpayers and revenue.
- The number of anticipated taxpayer victims fell between/during 2015 to 2016. Since January, the IRS Identity Theft Victim Assistance function experienced a marked drop of 48 percent in receipts, which includes Identity Theft Affidavits (Form 14039) filed by victims and other identity theft related correspondence.
- The number of refunds that banks and financial institutions return to the IRS because they appear suspicious dropped by 66 percent. This is another indication that improved data led to better filters which reduced the number of bad refunds being issued.
- Security Summit partners issued warnings to the public, especially payroll industry, human resources, and tax preparers, of emerging scams in which criminals either posed as company executives to steal employee Form W-2 information or criminals using technology to gain remote control of preparers’ office computers.
E-file Signature Verification
While ETAAC shifts its focus to include security and fraud detection, it still examines how IRS is doing in the e-file arena. One area in the report that I think warrants further reflection is ETAAC’s recommendation that IRS improve its ability to allow taxpayers to verify an e-filed return. The report discusses the history of signing and verifying an e-filed return, which now requires that the taxpayer have access to the prior year’s AGI or a special PIN. While most software will allow for those numbers to carry over from last year’s returns, at times taxpayers may not know last year’s AGI or the PIN (e.g., when there is a switch in software) and ETAAC tells us that this has triggered many taxpayers abandoning e-filing and reverting to paper filing.
The report discusses how the IRS Get Transcript online tool ostensibly could facilitate taxpayers getting access to their last year’s AGI but that access has a clunky authentication process that has led to a very high fail rate for users (the Report also discusses the compromising of a prior iteration of the Get Transcript online tool and other data breaches).
As IRS works out the kinks with its “Future State” platform, authentication and ease of taxpayer access will be crucial. Of course, given the backdrop of dedicated and as the report notes nimble and dedicated criminals who continue to probe for weaknesses this will continue to be a challenge for IRS and its partners.