The reason for this is almost entirely the Earned Income Tax Credit. The IRS estimates 21-26% of all EITC claims are improper. The rules are quite complex, which results in more errors and it is relatively straightforward for the IRS to detect certain classes of mistake or fraud through automation (i.e. to detect if the same child was claimed as a dependent by two different people on their return). Congress made the…
We should have an electronic filing system: if someone else filed claiming a dependent the next person to try to gets an error message and can resolve it amicably instead of hiring manual auditors to deal with an error/crime that shouldn't even be able to exist.
No post body was provided.