United We Stand, Divided We Fall

Thanks to Orin Hatch (R-Utah), the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, there may be action on Tax Refund Fraud committed through Identity Theft. In a hearing on this issue on Thursday March 12, 2015, the Hill reported that Tim Camus, deputy inspector general for investigations at the Treasury, in his testimony, indicated that legislation was needed to speed up third party submissions of information needed to verify tax payer returns and their requests for refunds. Another option, in our mind at United We Stand, is increasing the time before refunds are due from the IRS to the tax payer to 90 days from 45 days. Both would be helpful. John Valentine, Chairman of the Utah State Tax Commission, also testified and recommended new legislation ‘to strengthen information sharing between the IRS and the states…and to require third-party filing services to tighten their front end security’ to substantially decrease fraudulent tax returns. We hope the Senate and the House will take action on these recommendations quickly and thereby decrease Tax Refund Fraud substantially.
Harry Pukay-Martin