The Internal Revenue Service is not doing enough to prevent ID theft, the Government Accountability Office charged today. One way fraudsters steal refunds, according to the report, is filing false employer W-2 forms. “With this (and other) information, fraudsters can imitate the legitimate taxpayer and file fraudulent tax returns seeking refunds,” the report explained. The study acknowledged if the IRS imposes too strict of a standard to verify the identity of people to prevent stolen refunds it could place a significant burden on legitimate taxpayers. “If IRS makes the authentication process too stringent, legitimate taxpayers may not be able to successfully authenticate to, for example, access their prior year tax information or have IRS release a frozen refund,” GAO said.

Source: Forbes July 23, 2018 18:33 UTC