This is getting a little crazy – everybody in Congress and the White House has been talking about tax fraud and the IRS still can’t put out a reasonable program to check Earned Income Tax Credit refund requests before sending out the money. Oh yeah, later they find they paid out money to unqualified people, either through mistakes or fraud. See the update in AccountingToday by Michael Cohn:

http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/irs_watch/irs-made-improper-eitc-payments-of-133-156-billion-70631-1.html

There has got to be something else in place – the problem is it is politically important to send out tax refunds quickly to people so only the most superficial inspection is done before the money is sent, either through checks, debit cards or direct deposit, making this type of fraud easy to do. Come on guys, let’s do a little more checking before paying this money out!

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