IRS Clowns

This can't be good:

Sometime last year computers at the U.S. Social Security Administration were hacked and the identities of millions of Americans were compromised. What, you didn’t hear about that? Nobody did.

The extent of damage is only just now coming to light in the form of millions of false 2011 income tax returns filed in the names of people currently receiving Social Security benefits. That includes a very large number of elderly and disabled people who are ill-equipped to recognize or fight the problem. It’s an impact pervasive enough that the IRS now has a form just to deal with it: Form 14039: Identity Theft Affidavit, December 2011....

...The story is going public now because tax season is upon us and there’s no way to keep it under wraps as people file their tax returns only to learn that a return under that name has already been filed with refunds paid electronically into a bank account now closed. The December date on that IRS Form 14039 shows the Treasury has been expecting this for awhile.

And here's a thing - have you heard those IRS commercials warning you to protect your online tax filing information? Are they just trying to set us up to think it's our fault if our identities get stolen?

Thank you IRS - these are the guys who declared in 2011 that I must not have sent in my 2008 form 1040. They got, and cashed, the check, but somehow lost the 1040. They're the guys who deleted my Employer Identification Number and couldn't restore it for over a year. And now they've given my information to identity thieves.

And some people want the government to run health care?