In order to prevent identity theft and the filing of fraudulent income tax returns, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) created a process where they locked the tax accounts of individuals who were presumed dead. A new study is showing that this process isn’t working too well.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) reviewed the program and came up with the following results. As of January of this year, 52.5M taxpayer accounts had been noted as being deceased.
The problem is that at least 20K of those accounts were individuals who were still among the living.
The Service had been issuing letters to taxpayers who’d filed income tax returns that they thought were dead. The letters nullified the returns and refused any potential refunds.
In order to resolve the issue, the IRS did some program changes, completing an audit against the Social Security files in order to determine who was still actually above ground. This process unlocked almost 7K accounts out of almost 10K that had received the letter nullifying a return.
If they nullified your return, then there is a process we can go through to ask them to update their system. On the other hand, if you’re one of the taxpayers where they realized you’re still among the living, the problem should fix itself.
Let me leave you with this.
A small part of me is sad that they’ve supposedly fixed the problem. If the IRS wants to think that I’m dead, who am I to tell them no?
Think about it. Maybe I wouldn’t have to pay any more income taxes? Things could be worse. I could actually be dead.
What a joy that life would be. I could sit here, operate my businesses, serve my clients, deal with my issues, and save a whole lot of money.
Of course, the problem would come if someone down at the Kluczynski Federal Building realized their mistake ten years from now and forced me to file all of those returns. At that point I’d have to pay the back taxes plus interest and penalty.
That wouldn’t be a good day, so maybe it’s a bad idea. But a man can hope.
I guess it’s true that hope can at times be a four letter word.
We’re all going to get through this. Let’s get through it together.
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