One in four illegal immigrants are working with stolen Social Security numbers – and the IRS is not doing a sufficient job of informing Americans of the fraud, the Treasury Department's inspector general said in an audit released Thursday.
"Cases of employment identity theft can cause significant burden to innocent taxpayers, including the incorrect computation of taxes based on income that does not belong to them," J. Russell George, the Treasury Department's inspector general, said in a report disclosed by The Washington Times.
The IRS was able to identify only half of the potentially 1.4 million people who were likely affected by such fraud in 2015, the Times reported.
That is because the IRS is legally barred from working with the Department of Homeland Security to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents identify illegals who might be submitting the stolen numbers, according to the report.
For tax purposes, migrants generally receive an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number because they are not authorized to work in the U.S.
The immigrants then file tax forms using the ITINs, but their W-2 forms show valid Social Security numbers they have fraudulently given to employers to clear an initial work authorization check, the Times reported.
The IRS estimated as many as 2.4 million illegals filing taxes every year with the Social Security numbers are not authorized to have them.
In addition, 87 percent of forms filed online using ITINs showed income credited to a stolen Social Security number.
More than half of paper returns showed the same fake data.
The IRS tries to mark the files of the fraud victims when electronic filings are used, the Times reported.
However, the tax agency misses about half of the victims, George said in his report.
With paper forms, the IRS did even worse, the agency's audit found.
In response to the inspector general's report, the IRS said it took identity theft "very seriously," the Times reported.
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