Low level staffers to blame.
Via CIS:
During a recent Senate hearing chaired by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) focused on the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) support of identity theft by illegal aliens and the IRS’s total disregard for the American citizen victims of these crimes. Coats defined employment-related identity theft as occurring when someone uses another person’s identity — their name or their Social Security number (SSN) — to get a job illegally.
The hearing also exposed the failure of Congress to do anything to protect American citizens from massive illegal alien job-related identity theft, leading me to think that what needs to be done is to provide the Social Security numbers of all members of Congress plus the Social Security numbers of all IRS officials and their staffs to illegal aliens so they can file their taxes without stealing the identities of average American citizens.
IRS and Congress Encourage and Tolerate Illegal Alien, Job-Related Felonies
Three key points came from the interchange between Sen. Coates and IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
The IRS encourages and facilitates the commission of job-related felonies, including Social Security fraud, forgery, perjury, and identity theft as long as these crimes are committed by illegal aliens and their employers.
The IRS places the interests of illegal aliens ahead of those of American citizens by forbidding its employees from notifying American citizens, including millions of American children, that their Social Security numbers are being fraudulently used by illegal aliens in spite of the fact that these Americans suffer serious harm.
Congress is complicit since it has long been aware of the problem but has done nothing to protect American citizens from illegal alien, job-related felonies. I wrote about this in 2009 in a CIS Backgrounder: Illegal, but not Undocumented: Identity Theft, Document Fraud, and Illegal Employment”, and yet like Captain Renault in the film classic, “Casablanca”, every time this comes up our elected officials all repeat in unison “I’m shocked, shocked to find that illegal alien driven identity theft is going on in here!”
IRS Does Not Notify Victims
As Coats explained, when a stolen Social Security number is used, a W-2 form with this false information is then sent to the IRS and Social Security Administration (SSA) by an employer and the W-2 may be attached to the tax return of the illegal alien worker. The average person would naturally assume that when the IRS or SSA receives the phony W-2 they would flag it and take action against the employer and employee submitting it. However, they don’t and this is what really happens:
The IRS processes tax returns with false W-2 information and issues refunds as if they were routine tax returns.
When the IRS marks the account of a victim, it does not notify the Social Security Administration that the victims did not earn the income reported on a W-2.
The IRS forbids its employees from notifying victims that their information has been stolen. The IRS identified 200,000 new cases of employment-related identity theft last year and marked the victims’ accounts, yet did not notify the victims.
According to the IRS officials, their job is simply to process tax returns and issue tax refunds or collect taxes due.
The IRS ignores notifications from the Social Security Administration that a name does not match a Social Security number and may use its own system to determine whether or not a number is valid.
Employers are liable for IRS-imposed fines and penalties if they submit false W-2 information, yet neither the IRS nor the Social Security Administration notifies employers that the information they are submitting is false, and they don’t fine or otherwise penalize the employers.
The IRS does not examine returns submitted on paper for employment-related identity theft.
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George confirmed that what Sen. Coates outlined above was “completely accurate” and noted that the IRS did have a pilot program to address the issue, but ended it, so nothing is being done to protect Americans with Social Security numbers being used for employment purposes by illegal aliens.