IRS, States, and Tax Industry Announce New Steps to Help Public Protect Personal Data in order to Prevent Tax Identity Theft

The IRS has just announced their new “Taxes. Security. Together.” campaign which is designed to help raise public awareness about how their use of the internet and their personal devices can affect the safety of their financial and tax data. It will urge individuals to take active steps to protect themselves and make them aware of just how sophisticated identity thieves have become.

Included in the “Taxes. Security. Together.” campaign is information about how the IRS, state tax administrators, and the tax software industry are implementing an expanded series of protections for the upcoming 2016 filing season to address tax related identity theft. These added protections will include asking individuals for additional information that will be included with their tax return. The additional information will help government agencies ensure that the return they are accepting is truly the taxpayer’s and not one that is being filed by someone who has stolen their identity.

The “Taxes. Security. Together.” campaign is a direct result of the IRS Security Summit, a collaborative effort started in March 2015 between the IRS, states, and the tax industry to help fight tax identity theft (of which CrossLink Professional Tax Software has been a part of).  This joint campaign will include YouTube videos, weekly Tax Tips, and local events across the country. This information will also be included on state websites and by the professional tax software community during this upcoming filing season.

For more information on this campaign, see the following on the IRS website:

• Taxes. Security. Together webpage – Explains how taxpayers, tax preparers, and businesses can help fight tax identity theft.

• IRS News Article 2015-129 (IRS, States and Tax Industry Announce New Steps to Help Public to Protect Personal Tax Data)

• IRS Fact Sheet 2015-23 (IRS, States and Industry Partners Provide Update on Collaborative Fight Against Tax-Related Identity Theft)

• IRS News Article 2015-117 (IRS, States, Industry Continue Progress to Protect Taxpayers from Identity Theft)

IRS, Industry, and State Security Summit and Collaborative Effort to Fight Identity Theft

The IRS joined with representatives of the tax software industry and state tax administrators on June 11, 2015 to announce the new collaborative effort to help protect the nation’s taxpayers from identity theft and tax fraud.

CrossLink has been part of this effort for the past three months and looks forward to being part of the continuing partnership with other tax industry companies, the IRS, and states in the months ahead to help combat the growing impact of identity theft to the federal and state tax systems.

This effort began in March 2015 with the establishment of three teams that focused on developing ways to improve tax return authentication and validation, information sharing between the industry, IRS, and states, and fraud detection and assessment of risks in order to develop strategies in preventing emerging threats.

The members of the IRS Security Summit agreed to several new initiatives in the following areas:

• Taxpayer authentication - Industry and government groups identified numerous new data elements that can be included with the return to help authenticate the taxpayer and detect identity theft fraud.
• Fraud detection - An agreement was made to expand the sharing of fraud leads between industry and government.
• Information assessment - The groups will look at establishing a formalized Refund Fraud Information and Assessment Center to more efficiently share information between the public and private sector to help identify fraud schemes and reduce the risk to taxpayers.
• Cyber-security framework - Industry agreed to align with the IRS and states under the National Institute of Standards and Technology cyber-security framework to promote the protection of the information technology infrastructure.
• Taxpayer awareness and communication - A joint effort between the IRS, states, and industry to increase the effort to inform taxpayers and raise awareness of the importance of protecting taxpayers’ sensitive personal tax and financial data to help prevent identity theft and refund fraud.

To learn more about this new IRS, industry, and state collaborative effort to fight identity theft and protect taxpayers, see the following on the IRS website:

• IRS news release on IRS, Industry, and State Security Summit
• 2015 IRS Security Summit Report
• IRS Security Summit page

IRS Security Summit Working Group Kick-Off Meeting

The tax software industry, IRS, and state tax administrators will be holding their kick-off meeting to discuss ways to address identity theft, refund fraud, and data security on April 2, 2015 in Washington, D.C. The goal of these working groups is to collaborate on finding solutions that will help mitigate identity theft in the tax system.

Petz Enterprises is glad to be part of this discussion and happy that IRS Commissioner Koskinen is making identity theft a priority.

Our goal has been, and will continue to be, bringing whatever resources are necessary to help combat tax related identity theft. By working with the IRS and state tax agencies, we will continue to be at the forefront of this issue.

Our customers have benefited from the security features that we have included in our product to help protect them from this very serious problem, and we will continue to look at adding more in the future.

We are looking forward to working with the IRS, State governments, and other members of the tax industry to help address the issue of identity theft and security in these working groups over the next few months.

IRS Security Summit

Petz Enterprises, LLC (PEI), your CrossLink Team, participated in the March 19, 2015 IRS Security Summit meeting with the IRS, state tax administrators, and tax industry companies. The meeting was held to discuss ways to address the critical issue of identity theft, refund fraud, and data security.

At the meeting the IRS indicated their willingness to work with the industry and states to discuss solutions to help combat the growing issue of identity theft fraud in the following areas over the next few months:

• Fraud prevention and detection, which includes authentication of the taxpayers
• Information sharing related to fraud between IRS and state department of revenues, as well as with the tax industry
• Data security safeguards

The goal of this collaboration is to discuss solutions that can be implemented for the 2016 filing season and beyond. As always, CrossLink remains committed to data security for our professional tax preparer customers and the tax industry as a whole.