How to Avoid Tax Filing Frauds - Advocacy Suggestion for AARP

[emrmath]

The average person has no real way to influence policy decisions that are made by businesses or government agencies. However, AARP does have an influential position, and they have a much better chance of wielding some influence on an agency like the IRS. HERE IS A CLASSIC EXAMPLE! Much has been written about the rampant incidence of tax filing frauds, where a crook files a tax return in the name of an unsuspecting person and directs a massive refund to his own account. I have come up with a simple FOOLPROOF method whereby ANY person can totally protect himself from this fraud. The IRS merely needs to implement a mechanism whereby a person can simply designate on a checkbox that "ALL FUTURE TAX REFUNDS MUST BE APPLIED TO THE NEXT YEAR'S TAX ACCOUNT". People can make this designation for any overpayments when filing a CURRENT year return. However, if this option were enabled as an authorized designation for ALL FUTURE YEARS, there would be NO WAY a crook could obtain a fraudulent refund based on an impersonated filing.

If you would use your influence to get the IRS to appreciate the simplicity and absolute security of this measure, you would help protect millions of people from fraudulent activity. I realize that some people "like" getting tax refunds. However, by invoking the "APPLY TAX REFUND TO FUTURE YEARS" option, they would be fully protected from this insidious fraudulent practice. Float is essentially worthless. If people were allowed to routinely register tax refunds to be applied to next year obligations, they would be fully protected. They could always fine tune their deductions to minimize the amount of over-withholding in the next year. As a practical measure upon realizing that overpayments (withholding) for the prior year had been made, a taxpayer could simply complete a W-4 with his/her employer temporarily lowering (or zeroing) their withholding to recover their overpayment more quickly than waiting for a tax refund from the IRS. Any sensible person would jump at this opportunity for total protection from tax filing fraud.

As an added benefit, any fraudulent tax filing would be immediately flagged for the IRS so that it can take prompt action to apprehend the perpetrators of the fraud. Also, basic awareness of this simple solution should divert potential crooks from even attempting this corrupt action.

Please note that this practice would also eliminate similar fraudulent activity if each state would enable this feature for State tax filings.

I would be delighted to discuss this suggestion with anyone in your organization who would like to pursue this important opportunity.