(TheLastPatriotNews.com) – Striking revelations by the inspector general of the IRS have disclosed that the federal tax agency has been routinely losing taxpayers’ documents during shipping while failing to implement any meaningful damage control measures.
A new report released Thursday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration exposed the IRS mess in question.
The probe found that between October 2019 and August 2022, there were hundreds of cases in which the IRS lost taxpayers’ documents in shipments.
In many cases, the tax body didn’t inform the taxpayers their data had been lost or offer services to help them alleviate the effects of the breach, The Washington Times reports.
What’s even worse, however, due to its terrible record-keeping, in some instances, the IRS was unable to determine whose information was lost – and in other cases, it decided low-risk businesses didn’t even need “identity protection and credit monitoring services.”
“The IRS is not adhering to its own internal guidelines when sending large volumes of sensitive taxpayer information to and from its Tax Processing Centers,” the inspector general’s report concluded.
The IG rebuked the federal tax agency after finding that in nearly three years, the IRS lost 599 packages with sensitive taxpayer information.
The investigation delved into 50 instances. It established that the IRS informed the taxpayers of the data security breach in only 18 cases, offering them monitoring services.
In some cases, the IRS later discovered the respective package, or it had sent encrypted data, meaning no information was lost.
However, in 14% of the 50 investigated cases – or seven lost packages – the tax agency declared it couldn’t figure out who the affected taxpayers were – so it couldn’t offer them any help.
The IG report slammed the IRS for its shipping failures, stressing the importance of identifying and notifying anyone with lost data because of “the growing threat of identity theft.”
“The revelations come at a crucial time for the IRS, which has been facing intense attacks from Republicans who say the agency is unfair, intrusive and reckless,” The Times points out.
It stresses that the GOP lawmakers are trying to kill a provision for $80 billion in extra funding for the IRS included in President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Sometimes the IRS needs to send taxpayers' documents from one location to another. The documents don't always get there. https://t.co/oP1tmfrld3
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) August 3, 2023
