The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed that the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) paid out $12B in fraudulent tax refunds in just the last 12 months!
$12B dollars is 15 times greater than the $800M the Treasury estimates it would gain from repeal of the Bush/Obama Tax Cuts for the top 2% of filers –
Reading the details – for example –
- Stolen or purchased Social Security numbers
- Invented Employer Identification Numbers
- Invented Wages against stolen Employer Identification Numbers
- Hundreds — sometimes more than a 1000 (prepaid Debit Card) — refunds mailed to the same address
- Multiple identities assigned to the same Social Security Number
- Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers issued to ineligible individuals
Incredulity quickly gives way to smoking, hot, ANGER –
Its so easy to steal from the IRS that Florida police report a decrease of street crime as drug dealers and their customers turn to IRS Fraud as a faster, more lucrative and safer way to “score”.
Tax Preparers can make more money with their own laptops at home on a weekend than they make in legitimate business in years!
But soon, my anger turned to laughter —
Silly me. There is nothing that scares me more than the thought of an IRS audit.
Imagine the hundreds of hours preparing my own returns, fearful that I would be penalized if my numbers and the IRS numbers didn’t (computer) match exactly –
What computer match!!!!!
The IRS runs the same number of preventive checks that Medicare does – exactly 0.
- Refunds are paid immediately
- Even before the deadline for employer of financial institution reporting submissions that should be the first line of fraud defense —
In 2012 this fails the common sense test – even by what we laughingly referred to as “government work” –
- Is there a business in America where the Accounts Receivable (AR) Dept. will pay a vendor without a three way match of
- PO
- Packing Slip
- Invoice?
- Is there an AR Dept. that would pay multiple invoices against a PO (Social Security Number) without additional verification?
- Two Social Security numbers at the same address on separate returns – possible, maybe? But 100, 1000 —
- Google Maps can analyze the probabilities in nanoseconds!!!
Call me Polly Anna, but shouldn’t criminals at least need a high school diploma to successfully defraud the US Government?
Write, e-mail, tweet, or send a smoke signal to your Senators, Representatives, Secretary Geithner and the White House.
Tax fairness starts with honest and verified tax collection.
