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United States Government

America's IRS Can't Find Millions of Sensitive Tax Records: Watchdog (thehill.com) 69

An anonymous reader shares The Hill's report from earlier this month. Apparently America's tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service "cannot locate thousands of microfilm cartridges containing millions of sensitive individual and business tax account records, according to a watchdog report." The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in a report released August 8 that the IRS cannot account for microfilm cartridges — which contain backups of tax records as required under federal law — from fiscal 2010 that were originally stored at a processing center in Fresno, California... The watchdog also found seven empty boxes, which could hold up to 168 cartridges total, at the Ogden Tax Processing Center in Utah. Ogden personnel did not know where the missing cartridges were.

More than 4,000 cartridges containing business tax account information from fiscal 2018 and 4,500 cartridges containing individual tax account information from fiscal 2019 also could not be accounted for at the Kansas City facility, according to the report.

"The personal taxpayer and tax information included on these backup cartridges is key information that can be used to commit tax refund fraud identity theft," the report noted.

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America's IRS Can't Find Millions of Sensitive Tax Records: Watchdog

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  • by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Saturday September 02, 2023 @03:50PM (#63817630)
    The USA is strange in that every aspect of the government is politicalized to the point that defunding the IRS seems like a good idea to some people. This is a country that purposely makes their tax code difficult and outlaws the IRS giving tools to citizens to make it easier. This isn't Greece or Spain where so many people cheat on their taxes that the tax collectors there can only concentrate on the worst (or least politically connected) offenders. In the USA, the marginal dollar spent by the IRS results, in depending on the study, at least $3 more in revenue that the government is duly allowed to collect.
    • by Retired Chemist ( 5039029 ) on Saturday September 02, 2023 @04:02PM (#63817650)
      But the rich people who are the ones who would be paying that extra $3 do not want that to happen. The average person whose income is primarily from wages have little opportunity for tax fraud. Rich people and business whose taxes are complicated have lots of opportunities to play games. There is a whole industry of financial advisors who exist to create tax breaks for the wealthy, many of which are at least dubious and some of which are clearly fraudulent. If the IRS had the resources to go after them, they could not cheat on the taxes. Why do you think certain politicians are so reluctant to have their tax returns made public. It is because people would learn about how they are avoiding taxes by gaming the system and getting Congress to create loopholes for them.
    • But if the IRS was properly funded they could afford to hire more well-trained accountants to research more complex tax returns like those submitted by corporations and wealthy people and those entities might have to pay more taxes. While with less funding, the IRS is left going after simpler returns submitted by small(er) businesses and less-wealthy people, who often make simple mistakes rather than engage in purposeful obfuscation. Oh... wait.

      • Nah with more funding they'll just go after people sending money over CashApp and Venmo.

    • The IRS needs to be persuaded somehow to pursue the tax frauds at the top...

    • The USA is strange in that every aspect of the government is politicalized to the point that defunding the IRS seems like a good idea to some people. This is a country that purposely makes their tax code difficult and outlaws the IRS giving tools to citizens to make it easier.

      You seem to be conflating the IRS with revenue collection. The IRS is quite biased and bad at it. Also people who want to get rid of the IRS tend to want it replaced with a system that has no loopholes. Something that is quite simple. Where the math could fit on a damn postcard. Enter your total income. Lookup the percentage you owe and calculate your tax. Record how much you prepaid. Subtract to determine the amount due or the refund..

      The IRS is nothing more than the current enabler of our current tax c

      • The IRS enables the current tax code because it is their job. If you come up with a new tax code, they will administer it. Do not blame the messenger blame the sender (i.e., Congress). All of the "simple" suggestions I have seen are basically designed to make sure the rich pay as little as possible. Remember that a poor person's tax bill is coming out of necessities and a rich person's is coming out of luxuries. I have been paying taxes for about 50 years now and every year the tax code gets more compl
        • A new tax code would probably cause most of the IRS to lose their jobs.

        • by drnb ( 2434720 )

          The IRS enables the current tax code because it is their job. If you come up with a new tax code, they will administer it. Do not blame the messenger blame the sender (i.e., Congress).

          I blame Congress for the tax code. I blame he IRS for administering it in an inefficient and biased way and unfair way.

          All of the "simple" suggestions I have seen are basically designed to make sure the rich pay as little as possible.

          Wrong. I offered one as an example that does not.

          Remember that a poor person's tax bill is coming out of necessities and a rich person's is coming out of luxuries.

          Hence the tiered scheme I mentioned based on income, one that allows for no credits or deductions. A tax rate is determined for an individual, they pay that rate.

          The complexities of the tax code have nothing to do with tax rates, they are caused by the incredibly complicated definition of what is income.

          The definition of income, credits and deductions, etc ... the definitions are the source of corruption. So a system without exceptions should be created, be they income, credit, dedu

  • This is just to ensure it is not prosecutable...

  • You got there. Be ashamed if something happened to them.

  • In the trash (Score:3, Insightful)

    by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Saturday September 02, 2023 @04:28PM (#63817698)
    The cartridges are somewhere in a landfill near where they were stolen. The data is in several governments' intelligence databases.
  • by arbiter1 ( 1204146 ) on Saturday September 02, 2023 @06:22PM (#63817942)
    They will put all the problems of this on the people that records belong to as ones to take the punishment.
  • Why is the government not accountable for losing/leaking private financial data? I got a notification a few years back, one of the states where I used to live in sent me a notification that they posted my personal information on the web in the open and that it's been downloaded. They offered they would give me one year of credit report monitoring for free, with a negative marketing "if you don't cancel we will start charging you" clause, and only if I jump through whatever hoops and give them even more up t
  • Is there a government employer somewhere claiming to have converted paper documents to microfilm? Along with a company that is claiming to be manufacturing microfilm for the IRS.
  • Ah yes, so important they find out what happened to these records to protect people's privacy, but damn if they have any clue who the ProPublica leaker was.

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