MEPIS Community Forum

There's no excuse for it unless "government" is an excuse. I'm surprised no one has made billions making tax filing as easy as entering your tax payer id into a website. I'll be dead and gone (from stress) when it finally happens. bg

My understanding is that you have to enter the exact amount of the previous gross income from last year in order to e-file a tax return. So to file a bogus tax return, it takes more than just entering in a random SS number. You have to know (or correctly guess) last year's gross income figure that goes with that SS number. At least that's the way it works for the website I use, which is sanctioned by the IRS.

But in the end, it all boils down to the fundamental dichotomy between convenience and security. People want the convenience of e-filing, but it comes with a price. That goes for all forms of electronic transfers.

There have been many frauds with people filling in fake returns for other people and then taking the refunds from IRS...

Not directly related, but I found this interesting:

http://www.buffalonews.com/business/article802262.ece

Good point.

Very interesting. I had never heard of this although skimming is nothing new. I have always wondered how my favorite buffet stayed in business. I won't complain because it is good eating.

Heh...I've got it easy...I could get twice as much disability and still not have to file taxes. Even though I'm poor white folk, I consider it a blessing. I live in the mountains, don't have to deal with much stress, and am pretty damn happy...

I think the only advantage living in the big city has is that I'm close to work. The great City of Atlanta is "broke as a bicycle" and that translates to a lower quality of life, more stress, less of everything except taxes. I envy people who are happy.

bg

I have e-filed since it was available. No doubt there has been fraud, but show me actual data of e-filers who have been compromised. Saying there have been many cases is not data. How many snail mailed returns have been intercepted?

"IRS last year stopped more than 260,000 fraudulent tax returns involving confirmed cases of identity theft, preventing an estimated $1.4 billion in refunds from reaching suspected criminals.
Those totals represent a jump from 2010, when the IRS said it stopped 48,966 returns for confirmed identity theft and halted $247 million in related tax refunds." http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/bas ... 52903496/1

Bu I doubt it's related to e-filing specifically, it's related to identity theft and thieves getting hold of Social Security Numbers. Thieves can file by snail mail or e-file once they have the SSNs. And as you pointed you can get a SSN by intercepting snail mail as well, although it's probably more efficient to steal a lot of them at a time from a server.