It seems a bit too little, too late, but the Internal Revenue Service is continuing its efforts to make it harder for identity thieves to get their hands on our tax documents.
The IRS this week (Sept. 20) published a notice on its proposed regulations that would allow issuers of W-2 forms to truncate the recipients’ Social Security numbers. The idea is that even if criminals get their hands on the earnings statements, they would be of less use since they wouldn’t have workers’ full tax identification numbers.
Unfortunately for the IRS and the rest of us, the tax agency’s announcement came just days after credit bureau Equifax revealed a hack of its database exposed personal information — including Social Security numbers — of 143 million of us.
Source: IRS wants to cut off crooks’ tax info access by truncating Social Security numbers on W-2s