Posted on 08/06/2012 10:18:36 AM PDT by george76
The IRS pays out billions in fraudulent tax refunds, and Lansing is at the top of the list.
The IRS paid out more than $3 million in refunds to one address in Lansing. The IRS has not disclosed that address, but according to a new report issued by the IRS Inspector General, someone filed more than 2100 separate tax returns using that address, and received $3.3 million in fraudulent refunds.
The inspector general says identity thieves filing bogus tax returns got more than $5 billion in refunds last year. The inspector general also says the problem is so rampant., the IRS could pay out as much as $21 billion in fraudulent tax refunds over the next five years.
But even when the government realizes it has been scammed, the inspector general says there's not much that can be done to get the money back.
"The tax thieves or the identity thieves have learned that if they file tax returns early in the tax filing season, before a legitimate taxpayer has the opportunity to do so, they can preempt the legitimate taxpayer's refund
(Excerpt) Read more at wilx.com ...
Our government is incapable of cutting spending associated with fraud.
Our government is incapable of cutting spending on the most foolish and stupid things.
Our government is incapble of cutting spending taxpayer dollars to subsidize activities and economies of OTHER COUNTRIES. Including nations that are not acting as our allies.
Our government is incapable of setting a budget in living within it.
Our government is incapable of understanding the impact of taxation policy on individuals and businesses.
Our government is incapbale of treating taxpayers with the respect deserved. We are not thanked. We are insulted for not paying enough- when so many don’t pay a dime. We are told our contribution (earned from our hard work) was never really ours in the first place- that we didn’t make it on our own, that someone else helped get us there, that while we’re smart, there’s other smart people out there....
November needs to be a landslide. A back-handed B-slap to the leftard marxists to fully understand that they and their policies were rejected by America. To make certain they understand that they have been judged a failure.
Didn’t IBM once offer to build a system to eliminate tax fraud, and only be paid for it after it was proven to be successful?
The way this works is you get a Social Security number and apply for the “earned income credit” of about $5,000.00 for each return you send. See if you don’t feel like working the government pays you $5,000 as credit for staying dependant. In Florida there were schools where you could learn how to apply. The whole scheme was uncovered when the cops noticed lower crime but criminals were buying new cars with cash.
No software generated alarm for 2100 returns from same address???? Sounds like an inside job.
Are we to believe that the IRS could not install a simple “alert” in it’s system to apprise them of large refunds being requested at a single addresss.
The identity thieves do not need to “know” how much of a refund is due. They simply acquire the minimum identification necessary to file a return, then synthesize a return, file it and have the refund amount directed either to an address they can access or via a debit card, which they pull out of the mail. The IRS may audit the return (or they may not) but that will be at least a year, by which time the ID thieves have moved on. This is an epidemic of activity in Miami and Tampa. Police in Tampa have said that they are aware of organized criminals who have suspended their drug distribution activities and re-allocated resources to this kind of fraud, because the “return on investment” is so much better. The debit card balances are immediately tapped, converted into money orders or other transfers which make the chain of funds hard to trace. A lot of firepower on the streets in the hands of organized criminals has been purchased with the proceeds of this fraud, and the IRS seems not to be in much of a hurry to stamp it out.
2100 returns from the same address? No business owner with sweat equity would be that stupid........
Are you trying to say that our govt. is incapable?
I would say they are very capable. When it comes to screwing us.
I am simply not believing even the IRS could act this stupidly. There must be more to this story.
We have a Lansing here in Ks, home of the Federal Prison, so it jumped in my mind first.
Exactly. This sort of fraud would be easy to detect if the govt. wanted to detect it. I wonder if these were Holder’s people (his words, not mine)?
Here is a theory (mine to be exact): Maybe there are some IRS agents that are in on the scam. Someone sets up a fake address, IRS agents get in on the deal, and since those same agents would have to check and clear the returns said returns slide right through. Who is going to question the IRS?
Lansing is downright conservative compared to Ann Arbor.
My experience was that Lansing is a labor town, and you have some percentage of Reagan Democrats.
Ann Arbor is more like Berkeley Calif.
lansing is also a city in Illinois.
Time to scrap it and start over.
Even MSU is a relatively conservative school as things go. Still a lot of forestry and agricultural training going on there.
There has to be a reason there is no multiple filing software generated flag. I simply cannot think of an honest one. Even lack of competence is not convincing.
Yes it’s similar to Purdue here in Indiana.
One of my daughters graduated from Purdue, I thought it was a pretty solid place.
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