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IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#101

Post by Talanes »

alistairSH wrote: post #55
vorpalhex wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are still in the same universe where the OPM breach happened, right? Like no, I don't trust the government to protect the big bucket of PII on everyone in digital form. Not because of lizard people but because the government can barely keep it's own sites secure. Giving them more dangerous data in the form of bulk PII is the wrong move. Login.gov was the first thing, in a long time, that was well executed. I need…

The IRS already has almost all our PII. Not sure how adding a photo materially changes anything in that regard. I do agree ID.me is the wrong approach. And login.gov should be used in some form over a private enterprise. But, my concern is two-fold… it’s a private entity that I don’t really want to do business with. And the process described by Krebs was impossible - can we really expect everybody to have email, vali…

My father doesn't have any sort of web-connected camera, which caused a whole set of problems with his unemployment that I can't remember how they got fixed.

On a similar note, I don't have a lot of documents tied to my name, so I had nothing that they wanted when my photo verification didn't work for whatever reason. Pretty sure I just never solved that one and left the last couple weeks I would have gotten unemployment on the table.

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#102

Post by eru »

cproctor wrote: post #32
strangesongs wrote: post #6

“Login.gov is already used to access 200 websites run by 28 Federal agencies and over 40 million Americans have accounts,” Wyden wrote in a letter to the IRS today. “Unfortunately, login.gov has not yet reached its full potential, in part because many agencies have flouted the Congressional mandate that they use it, and because successive Administrations have failed to prioritize digital identity. The cost of this in…

If the IRS (or Sen. Wyden) is looking for a "core government service" which has been inappropriately commercialized, they might start with tax preparation.

The commercialization itself isn't the problem, but that the data that the IRS already has on you isn't available for you, I guess?

If they made the data available to you, an open source program could take it and spit out your tax forms. The existence of commercial alternatives wouldn't hurt this workflow one bit.

Of course, the problem seems to be that those commercial alternatives come with considerable lobbying to make access hard. And from what I've heard, US taxes are so complicated, that it's hard to do them right.

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#103

Post by eru »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #85
throw10920 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really good point - if the tax code were a few dozen pages for the common case instead of a few hundred , then you might not even need tax-prep software in the first place. "The best program is the one that doesn't exist", to quote a popular refrain. Ongoing software projects require periodic refactoring to reduce complexity and increase comprehension - why would the law be any different?

I think we've fairly well established that the complexity of the code isn't the problem. The IRS knows what you owe and could just tell you if they wanted to. Having citizens exposed directly to the mechanics of it during the filing process is a policy choice and the way to fix that is to change the policy, not try to reinvent the tax code from first principles. This is a complex set of laws yes but it is also detail…

> This is a complex set of laws yes but it is also detailed multi-generational documentation of all the shit people have tried to pull. You don't just throw that out because it has grown complex. Like all necessary complexity, you isolate and manage it, not spray it all over the end user.

Who says that complexity is necessary?

Most of that complexity just grew out of other complexity.

If you have a simpler tax code to begin with, you don't need to patch all the work-arounds people found.

Of course, that's much easier said that politically done. Simpler taxes are popular as an idea, but rarely when you get into the specifics.

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#106

Post by idontwantthis »

Was this just a Theranos level scam? It simply didn't work, right? I uploaded perfect scans of my passport and driver's license and it couldn't recognize them, so I had to wait several hours to video chat with a real person, who confirmed my identity.

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#107

Post by wolverine876 »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #78
apex3stoker wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article[1] has more details. Sen. Wyden[2] has been pushing for more funding to IRS to develop its free file program, but Turbotax has been successful via their lobbying of Republican politicians and some Democratic politicians in preventing it from happening. 1. https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f... 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/opinion/intuit-turbotax-f...

Lol. Its always the Republicans. If it was priority for the Dems, they'd have done it. They have gotten through several other things the Republicans opposed. Anyhow, the better alternative is to return to lower the rates and remove deductions (aside from the standard deduction). Even simpler yet would be to go to a flat tax with an extremely high standard deduction (e.g. ~$50k with ~10% after that). I can't think of…

The GOP opposes it; they are the obstacle. I think such actions by the GOP has become normalized for people, and so they overlook it. I don't see how you can blame the Democrats, who are voting for it.

> If it was priority for the Dems, they'd have done it.

Easily said, but as we know, not easily done.

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#108

Post by wolverine876 »

throw10920 wrote: post #80
ThunderSizzle wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. Its always the Republicans. If it was priority for the Dems, they'd have done it. They have gotten through several other things the Republicans opposed. Anyhow, the better alternative is to return to lower the rates and remove deductions (aside from the standard deduction). Even simpler yet would be to go to a flat tax with an extremely high standard deduction (e.g. ~$50k with ~10% after that). I can't think of…

This is a really good point - if the tax code were a few dozen pages for the common case instead of a few hundred , then you might not even need tax-prep software in the first place. "The best program is the one that doesn't exist", to quote a popular refrain. Ongoing software projects require periodic refactoring to reduce complexity and increase comprehension - why would the law be any different?

> if the tax code were a few dozen pages for the common case instead of a few hundred

Isn't this the fantasy of clean sheet software? 'We'll get rid of all this cruft and make it clean and simple.' But it turns out that the cruft is needed to deal with reality, which is messy rather than the abstract clean-room requirements of our imaginations.

I can't see how the tax code can be short, having to deal with such a wide range of situations. Has anyone every successfully used a tax code like the short, simple ones that people fantasize about?

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#109

Post by vkou »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #77
michaelt wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Problem is, the federal government (and the state governments and to a large extent big chunks of the citizenry) are fundamentally opposed to the issuance of a non-passport general citizen's ID and/or number. I wonder if this mightn't change with states increasingly requiring voter ID. After all, it'd be pretty dumb to on one hand mandate that every voter have government-issued ID, and on the other to oppose it.

The bulk of those who are pushing for more voter ID are from the most political alliance most vocal about both (a) insisting the voting is a state matter (b) federal government issuing ID is not OK.

You forgot (c) doing their best to limit the access to and eligibility of the kind of ID that people who don't vote for them can get.

It's not dumb, it's just evil.

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#110

Post by niij »

guerrilla wrote: post #105

Do people need to care about this if they're filing online with a firm like H&R Block?

No. But do note that H&R Block (along with Intuit and others) pay lobbyists to make filing your taxes a difficult costly process. I'd recommend using https://freetaxusa.com (legit, great site for only $15) or paying a local, independent CPA, to file your taxes instead.

https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...

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