According to the Federal Trade Commission’s 2021 Data Book, the Consumer Sentinel Network received over 4.7 million consumer reports focusing on fraud, identity theft, and other consumer protection topics in 2020, an increase from the prior year. Of those, nearly 3 in 10 reports—more than any other type of complaint—were on identity theft.
It’s an issue that the IRS and its partners take seriously: Identity theft for tax purposes is so popular that it is regularly named one of the IRS’s Dirty Dozen Tax Scams.
The IRS has taken several steps to combat ID theft, including issuing Identity Protection PINs, limiting the number of tax refunds going to financial accounts or addresses, and masking personal information from tax transcripts.
But the IRS’s latest effort to combat ID theft is causing controversy: Selfies.
Selfie Technology
No, the IRS isn’t requiring you to log on to Instagram—though it does have an account—it is using new technology focused on photo identification for verification.
Here’s what has folks talking. When you navigate to irs.gov to access your account online, you normally go to a screen where you log on with your IRS user name. But this tax season, taxpayers—like me—noticed that the sign-in screen looked a little different. In addition to the option to “sign in with an existing IRS username,” you could create or sign in with ID.me.
According to the IRS instructions, “If you have an existing IRS username, please create a new ID.me…
