Every dollar counts, now more than ever, as the government searches for ways to wisely spend our money. It’s dismaying to learn that an audit report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has found that the impact of identity theft on tax administration is significantly greater than the amount the IRS detects and prevents. Even worse, the “IRS uses little of the data from identity theft cases…to detect and prevent future tax refund fraud” according to Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.

• The IRS is detecting far fewer fake tax returns than are actually falsely filed. 938,700 were detected in 2011. On the other hand, TIGTA identified 1.5M additional undetected tax returns in 2011 with potentially fraudulent tax refunds totaling in excess of $5.2B.
• The study predicted that the IRS stands to lose $21B in revenue over the next 5 years with new fraud controls, or $26B without the new controls.
• Key victims include the deceased, children, or someone who would not normally file a return such as lower income individuals that are not legally required to file.
• A Postal Inspector in Florida uncovered a tax refund scheme whereby refunds were going into debit-card accounts via thieves using the social security numbers (SSN) of dead people. Direct deposit is preferred as it doesn’t require a mailing address, photo ID, name or a trip to the bank.
• The IRS allows multiple direct deposits to the same bank account. A key finding in the report showed hundreds of tax returns were filed from a single address. In one case, 2,137 returns resulted in $3.3M in refunds to a home in Lansing, Michigan, and 518 returns resulted in $1.8M in refunds to a home in Tampa, Florida.
• The IRS lacks access to 3rd party information to verify returns and root out fraud. It is issuing refunds in January before it can verify data from employers and financial institutions in March. This gap provides a huge window of opportunity for thieves.
• The IRS is not gathering enough information to prevent fraud; i.e., how the return is filed, income information on the W-2, the amount of the refund and where the refund is sent.
• New screening filters that can identify false tax returns before they are processed have the potential to diminish the number of fraud cases as well as other ongoing anti-fraud procedures employed by the IRS. It is placing a unique identity theft indicator on the accounts of the deceased. As of March, 2012, 164,000 accounts were locked, possibly preventing $1.8M in fraud.

Charles Boustany, the US House of Representatives Oversight Subcommitte Chairman, who sent a letter to the IRS demanding a full accounting for the agency’s continued inability to stop tax fraud related to identity theft, declared that “this report raises serious questions regarding the IRS’s ability to detect tax fraud…”. The lost federal money is extremely troubling but there’s another loss to consider – the potential to erode taxpayer confidence in our system of tax administration.

John Sileo is an award-winning author and international speaker on the dark art of deception (identity theft, data privacy, social media manipulation) and its polar opposite, the powerful use of trust, to achieve success. He is CEO of The Sileo Group, which advises teams on how to multiply performance by building a culture of deep trust. His clients include the Department of Defense, Pfizer, the FDIC, and Homeland Security. Sample his Keynote Presentation or watch him on Anderson Cooper, 60 Minutes or Fox Business. 1.800.258.8076.