Student Aid Tool Held Key for Tax Fraudsters
Summary: The IRS temporarily shut down its Data Retrieval Tool, which let FAFSA applicants pull adjusted gross income directly from IRS records, after concerns that identity thieves could misuse the information. KrebsOnSecurity reported that anonymous sources said thieves were using the tool to look up AGI, which is also required to validate electronically filed tax returns. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration opened a criminal investigation into potentially fraudulent use of the tool.
What you should know: AGI is the same field needed to sign and validate an e-filed return, so a lookup tool built for students doubled as a way for fraudsters to file refund claims in someone else's name. The IRS has been here before: its Get Transcript feature was abused in 2015, and its estimate of affected taxpayers climbed from 100,000 to 330,000 to roughly 724,000.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
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