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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

#151

Post by jonathankoren »

throw10920 wrote: post #139
giraffe_lady wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I think we've fairly well established that the complexity of the code isn't the problem. I've never heard this claimed before; I'm interested to see your evidence, because it's also not obviously true.

Of course a tax code is complicated. It touches pretty everything with respect to income and expenditures, with numerous special cases. The truth is, that most people only deal with the same two forms, a 1040 and a W2. Like anything complex, only a very small portion is actually utilized by any particular individual. Glossing over this, and instead trumpeting some canard like number of pages, or number or words, is simply a rhetorical device to mask different objective.

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#152

Post by vorpalhex »

closeparen wrote: post #74
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…

With a remotely sane identity system, knowing someone’s identifiers and basic biographical facts would not help you to impersonate them. PII has the sensitivity that it does in today’s world only because we abuse knowledge of PII as a poor man’s authentication mechanism.

The danger of PII goes well beyond impersonation.

"Here is a list of every Jewish person in this zipcode with their home address..."

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#153

Post by guerrilla »

niij wrote: post #147
guerrilla wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of the cartel and their lobbying. Unfortunately I doubt FreeTaxUSA will work for me as ex-patriot in a slightly complicated situation and there are no CPAs here. I'll check it out though, thanks.

Oh, no! I'm sorry you have to deal with that situation. I've heard filing as an expat is terrible with FATCA reporting etc. I'm planning to move out of the country in retirement but it's still years away for me. If you don't mind me asking: how does managing your financial accounts work where you are? Do you still maintain USA bank/investment/retirements accounts (via mail forwarding?) or do you have them open in you…

I only opened a US bank account recently because of those COVID-19 relief checks that were sent out and nobody around here would cash them for me*. Other than that I've had no financial connection to the US.

* Checks are considered an arcane and insecure technology from the stone age here.

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#154

Post by [deleted] »

vorpalhex wrote: post #152
closeparen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a remotely sane identity system, knowing someone’s identifiers and basic biographical facts would not help you to impersonate them. PII has the sensitivity that it does in today’s world only because we abuse knowledge of PII as a poor man’s authentication mechanism.

The danger of PII goes well beyond impersonation. "Here is a list of every Jewish person in this zipcode with their home address..."

[deleted]

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#155

Post by closeparen »

vorpalhex wrote: post #152
closeparen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a remotely sane identity system, knowing someone’s identifiers and basic biographical facts would not help you to impersonate them. PII has the sensitivity that it does in today’s world only because we abuse knowledge of PII as a poor man’s authentication mechanism.

The danger of PII goes well beyond impersonation. "Here is a list of every Jewish person in this zipcode with their home address..."

Every characteristic needs to be secret just in case someone decides to murder everyone with that characteristic.

If that is going to happen in the US it is probably going to be a red/blue culture war thing. Shall we eliminate campaign finance transparency?

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#156

Post by vorpalhex »

closeparen wrote: post #155
vorpalhex wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The danger of PII goes well beyond impersonation. "Here is a list of every Jewish person in this zipcode with their home address..."

Every characteristic needs to be secret just in case someone decides to murder everyone with that characteristic. If that is going to happen in the US it is probably going to be a red/blue culture war thing. Shall we eliminate campaign finance transparency?

Knowing where your Jewish friend lives is fine. Having a list of every Jewish person in your zipcode (or every X) is like holding a handgrenade.

When the Ashley Madison hack happened a whole mess of blackmail was the result.

I have had someone target me in an attempt of blackmail due to a forum breach (why they thought an anime forum was good blackmail beats me...)

Your browsing habits, which is a step removed from PII, even reveals your sexuality and pregnancy status.

And, we had an attack on Jewish people in the last month. We have not had anyone Democrat/Republican hunting.

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#157

Post by mikestew »

bzbarsky wrote: post #93
giraffe_lady wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The IRS knows what you owe and could just tell you if they wanted to. This is true often, but not always. Examples just off the top of my head: * Had large medical bills compared to your AGI? How does the IRS know that? * Paid for college tuition? How does the IRS know that? * Deducting state sales taxes? How does the IRS know what those were for you? * Paid for daycare? How does the IRS know how much? I'm sure I c…

Itemize if you feel deductions will exceed the standard deduction, leave the rest of us alone to agree/disagree with the amount on the postcard the IRS sent and mail our checks. Now that our paid mortgage interest is low enough to not matter, I can’t remember the last year that the IRS couldn’t have just send us a postcard with the amount they think we owe, and we would have paid probably exactly that amount. And we have a ton of stock transactions and the like. I’m willing to wager that for the vast majority of U. S. residents for the vast majority of their lives, their deductions will not exceed the standard deduction.

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#158

Post by mactrey »

RHSeeger wrote: post #133
jonathankoren wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think you can do better than the standard deductions, you’re more than welcome to itemize — just like today. Pretending that the current system is as good as it can get the for the vast majority of individuals is disingenuous. Just look at every other country that sends out prefilled forms.

> Pretending that the current system is as good as it can get the for the vast majority of individuals is disingenuous Pretending the IRS "knows exactly what you owe and could just tell you" is just as disingenuous. In both cases, it's more complicated than that.

Some people have complicated taxes (need to itemize; IRS is missing information). Some people have simple taxes (standard deduction; IRS knows what they owe). Why should the second group have to pay for tax prep software or fill out forms by hand? Just to share the pain of the first group?

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#159

Post by vkou »

HWR_14 wrote: post #130
vkou wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because our society would fall apart without a social credit system. How else are we going to judge flight risk, loan risk, apartment lease risk, employment risk, etc?

Flight risk is an FAA thing or a bail bondsman thing. Or are you using a version I haven't heard before? Similarly, I have no idea why Equifax would have anything to say about Employment Risk. But, yes, they provide a service. And? There are two other major players who didn't fuck up who supply the same service.

> Similarly, I have no idea why Equifax would have anything to say about Employment Risk.

If you got hired for any job worth doing at any point in the last decade, chances are high that among the various background checks, your employer also ran a credit check on you.

> a bail bondsman thing

Why wouldn't a bail bondsman care about your credit history?

Re: IRS to ditch biometric requirement for online access

#160

Post by throw10920 »

jonathankoren wrote: post #151
throw10920 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we've fairly well established that the complexity of the code isn't the problem. I've never heard this claimed before; I'm interested to see your evidence, because it's also not obviously true.

Of course a tax code is complicated. It touches pretty everything with respect to income and expenditures, with numerous special cases. The truth is, that most people only deal with the same two forms, a 1040 and a W2. Like anything complex, only a very small portion is actually utilized by any particular individual. Glossing over this, and instead trumpeting some canard like number of pages, or number or words, is s…

Of course there are "special cases" - that should be obvious. However, it's very much not obvious that there are 74,000 pages worth of special cases, which is the actual argument that I'm making that you conveniently ignored. It's pretty clear that the extreme case of tailoring the tax code to the individual results in a hundred thousand clauses of the tax code, which is infeasible, and so there's necessarily the lossy aggregation of many real-world individual financial situations into a smaller number of "paths" through the tax code.

> Glossing over this, and instead trumpeting some canard like number of pages, or number or words, is simply a rhetorical device to mask different objective.

There's no "glossing over" - it's pretty clear that even though there are "a lot" of special cases, that there are reasonable (and unreasonable) amounts of complexity of the tax code relative to the distribution of circumstances. It sure sounds like you have another objective that you're masking yourself.

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