The Taxpayer Protection Program (TPP) was supposed to prevent the filing of fraudulent tax returns. Scammers have beaten the single-factor authentication procedure and have accessed the personally identifiable information (PII) used to authentic a taxpayer.
Thus “thousands of bogus filers get refunds from the IRS annually, possibly more.” They don’t really know how much the government’s been defrauded, but this “has been going on for years.”
IRS — Incompetent Revenue Service
Maybe if they weren’t so busy going after the Tea Party they would have time to go after the real criminals? …nah…never mind.
It’s just a little wealth redistribution. What’s the big deal?
A friend filed his taxes last year and IRS informed him that he already filed.
Interesting that they got taken! They sure do always take me and my money!
How can the meanest agency on the face of the earth ‘get taken’?
Happened to me a few years ago. After a certain BANK chain in the United States OF AMERICA employee gave out my SS# and other info to ID thieves in Kalifornia, they tried to open accounts, steal from our bank account etc etc. Fortunately for me an employee from a company contacted me as soon as it happened, so that saved me from huge disaster. Well about two years later, we go in to file our taxes with the accountant and the next day we are told our electronic return was rejected because it was already filed.
What really burned me was that my wife and I file jointly. The tax return that was submitted was as if I was a single payer who lived in a different state and claimed they made 3X my previous salary. So that meant the IRS has nothing in place to throw up red flags that it could have been a bogus return.
Then it took a year and the help of a taxpayer advocate to help us get our due refund. Since then we’ve been getting PIN numbers every year that have to be attached to the return or it will be rejected. You would think that should be the norm for everybody. Just shows what a screwed up system we have.