The oversight arm of the Treasury Department says the IRS knows more than one million illegal aliens file taxes with stolen Social Security cards, but does little, if anything, about it.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration says the IRS in 2015 only managed to identify half of the Americans impacted by Social Security fraud.
“You have income being reported under these Social Security numbers that the person who that Social Security numbers belongs to is unaware of, so the IRS goes after them for unpaid taxes,” says Ira Mehlman at the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Mehlman asks if the federal government won't fix it, who will?
“Everything in our lives hinges on our Social Security numbers, so when this happens it can ruin people's lives and the government owes it these people to enforce our laws,” he says.
The report goes on to say the IRS is not allowed to talk with Homeland Security to identify who and where those taxpayers are.
“When the government knows about it and it really is not interested in doing anything about it, you can understand why people have such a low opinion of the federal government,” says Mehlman.