Comment by d_burfoot
9 months ago
It's worth remembering that the main reason this kind of data breach is a real problem is mostly due to the incompetence of the IRS. For any serious financial organization, knowing a person's SSN, name, address, etc doesn't allow you to access or withdraw that person's finances.
But the stupidity of the IRS means that people are easily targeted by false tax return attacks. File a fake tax return for someone, using their SSN/name/address, but tell the IRS you changed address. Then the IRS sends your tax refund to the new address, and boom, you just collected some poor sod's refund. To add insult to injury, the IRS is probably going to audit the person whose refund you stole.
But not just the IRS; the banking system, most healthcare providers, states for most of a century, and the credit bureaus for REusing SSN as unique identifier "passwords".
I agree. The IRS should be better funded so they can afford to update their systems and hire more tech experts.
I hope this is meant to be satirical. The IRS has a massive budget. Maybe just reallocate their current funds instead of giving them more is a better idea.
I don’t think the parent is satirical at all; as an enumerated power, the IRS needs modernization and better funding.
Recent hiring expansions have increased audits for high earners and generated additional revenue. Turbotax’s lobbyists are losing influence and we’re enjoying free filing options for individuals in some states. It’s also reasonable to say that a revenue service is not responsible for defining authentication security standards.
Why do you think reallocating funds is worth it as a response to this issue? Where would those funds go?
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This comment is shockingly misguided.
The IRS doesn't have the authority to mandate the creation of a secure national ID system and enforce it's use by the financial system. Only congress has the ability to really do that. The IRS collects revenue.
Even if it did have that authority, it doesn't have the budget to accomplish that goal.
isn't it funny how no government service is ever at fault, it's always just a problem of funding? The IRS is good, just under funded. Public schools are good, just under funded. The NHS is good, just under funded. The roads are good, just under funded
except then funding is raised, and it's still a problem of funding. and inevitably, it's the evil side of the government (you know the one) that is to blame, even if there is no money to spend.
how does a public service determine when they have enough funding?
This is neither a problem of funding or any government service being at fault. This is the fault of American culture. A national ID system sounds too scary to too many Americans. Politicians aren't going to waste their political capital on pushing through something so unpopular. It really isn't any more complicated than that. There is a huge desire for some sort of national ID system and SSNs are the closest we got so they filled the vacuum. It is silly to blame that on the IRS. It is a societal failure.
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When exactly has funding EVER been raised for any of those things??
That's one of the biggest political fights in the past century: austerity, cutting public spending, and means-testing the fuck out of every social program the government even still offers. This has been the case since the 80s reagan-thatcher year. You can literally look at the budgets of major cities and easily see where the majority of spending goes. Hint: it ain't public schools. Were you not paying attention when people were talking about how much police departments get paid out of the budgets of their cities a couple years back? Have you EVER thought to actually substantiate your beliefs by actually looking up the policies that effect public spending and government budgets?
Is the answer "no"?
And it isn't just a problem with funding, it's a legislative and cultural problem too. But in the short term, without drafting up new laws or changing the culture of society, the best we can do to fix these issues is provide more funding.
In the private sector, OKRs and KPIs are used to track performance and provide metrics on whether a company is meeting its goals. Boards review these metrics and decide on additional investments based on thorough cost/benefit analyses.
I imagine it's similar in the public sector, where funding is determined by the needs of the public, political considerations, long-term planning, and so on.
What you describe might be out of date. Someone tried to use my identity to file a fake tax return. The IRS caught it and now I get issued a PIN every tax season for kinda-sorta two factor auth.