IRS Supervisors Actually Discouraging ITIN Anti-Fraud Efforts, TIGTA Says

IRS supervisors have been urging employees to ignore potentially fraudulent applications for individual taxpayer identification numbers, which can be used by individuals without Social Security numbers to pay taxes or claim refunds, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in a report released Aug. 8.

TIGTA said IRS management created an environment that discourages tax examiners from identifying questionable ITIN applications and established processes and procedures that are inadequate to verify each applicant’s identity and foreign status.

Moreover, IRS managers actually eliminated successful processes used to identify questionable ITIN application fraud patterns and schemes.

TIGTA said its report was ...