IRS to Make ID Protection PIN Open to All

2020-12-04 14:50

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service said this week that beginning in 2021 it will allow all taxpayers to apply for an identity protection personal identification number, a single-use code designed to block identity thieves from falsely claiming a tax refund in your name.

Currently, IP PINs are issued only to those who fill out an ID theft affidavit, or to taxpayers who've experienced tax refund fraud in previous years.

The short answer is the IRS is under tremendous pressure to issue refunds quickly and to minimize "False positives" - even when it may not yet have all of the information needed to accurately distinguish phony filings from legitimate ones.

One way the IRS has sought to stem the flow of bogus tax refund applications is to issue the IP PIN, which is a six-digit number assigned to eligible taxpayers to help prevent the use of their Social Security number on a fraudulent income tax return.

Up until now, the IRS has restricted who can apply for an IP PIN, although it has over the past few years issued them proactively to some taxpayers as part of a multi-state experiment to determine if doing so more widely might reduce the overall incidence of refund fraud.

News URL

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/12/irs-to-make-id-protection-pin-open-to-all/

#IRS