It’s not getting any easier for taxpayers this season. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced that it has temporarily suspended the Identity Protection PIN (IP PIN) tool on the IRS website.
The website currently says:
The IP PIN tool is unavailable until further notice. The Internal Revenue Service is reviewing this tool and looking at further strengthening its security features. Taxpayers who have been issued an IP PIN through a CP01A Notice should continue to file their tax returns with an IP PIN as they normally would. Taxpayers who have lost their IP PINs and need to retrieve their numbers should follow these instructions. Taxpayers seeking to opt into the IP PIN program should file as they normally would, without an IP PIN.
At the start of the tax season, the IRS announced that it was ramping up the usage of IP PINs for taxpayers as part of its efforts to crack down on identity-related theft. An IP PIN is a unique 6 digit sequence that helps the IRS verify a taxpayer’s identity. When you have an IP PIN, it prevents someone else from filing a tax return with your Social Security Number (SSN) since returns which don’t include the correct IP PIN may be booted back. If a tax return is e-filed with your SSN but an incorrect or missing IP PIN, the IRS e-file system will reject the return until you submit the return with the correct IP PIN or you file a return on paper. If a tax return is filed on paper with your SSN but an incorrect or missing IP PIN, the IRS will delay processing the return – including any refund due – while they determine the validity of the return.
Not every taxpayer has an IP PIN. The IRS issued about 2.7 million IP PINs (sent using a CP01A letter) by mail for the current filing season (and some of those received IP PIN letters with the wrong date – oops!). Those IP PINs were issued to taxpayers participating in a pilot program as well as those who were the victims of non-tax identity theft. Most taxpayers who received their IP PIN via mail never used the online tool: those taxpayers should file their tax returns normally using the assigned IP PIN.
By Kelly Phillips Erb, Forbes, SouthFloridaReporter.com, Mar. 10, 2016
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