Word: fraude
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Frazier Todd Jr., a flimflam man from Atlanta, sussed out the IRS's inability to detect fraud. Todd obtained Social Security numbers from dozens of Atlanta women who lived in public housing projects. He then secured employer IDs from the IRS (making him look as if he were hiring them) and transcribed both numbers onto W-2 forms that he used to prepare electronic returns. Todd filled in an income for these women and a figure for taxes withheld that was high enough to kick back a generous refund. Todd then took the returns to banks to obtain "refund anticipation...
Open the floodgates, he should say. While you've been fussing over itemization, less solid citizens have been pillaging the IRS, having discovered that the agency can't catch them. The foundation of fraud detection is what professionals call "information matching"--reconciling all the information supplied by the taxpayer (including Social Security numbers) with the information on W-2s and 1099 (miscellaneous income) forms, not to mention investment income and bank transactions. The antiquated IRS computer system is apparently unable to do this in a timely way, or sometimes to do it at all. Fraud happens between those stovepipes...
This year the IRS asserts that it has a more comprehensive fraud-detection system up and running for electronic filing. The agency will not say exactly what the new system does, though it is thought to be able to provide sophisticated "matching" across various computer networks...
Alas, the fraud detection works only with electronic returns, a mere 13% of those filed. There is evidence that some unscrupulous filers have shifted back to old-fashioned paper, which bypasses the sophisticated screening. The IRS recently reviewed some rejected electronic returns only to discover that the same taxpayers subsequently refiled on paper, using the same phony Social Security numbers, and duly got their refunds...
Camped ostentatiously at the impact point of our age's need to believe and its need to know, and generating best sellers both for its fervent proponents and (lately) its detractors, the historical Jesus movement (Flash! Virgin birth a cover-up! Resurrection a fraud!) hardly wants for print. Yet in his Gospel Truth (Riverhead Books; 305 pages; $24.95), Russell Shorto provides a useful addition: an up-to-date survey and smart lay analysis of the theories that together constitute one of the stickiest challenges to traditional Christianity...