The Internal Revenue Service and Security Summit partners today announced a restructuring of the public-private partnership designed to strengthen protections and enhance information sharing across the tax system. The change supports ongoing efforts to safeguard taxpayers from identity theft and related fraud.
The Security Summit is a unique public-private partnership comprised of the IRS, state tax administrators, tax software companies, the tax professional community and the larger tax community. The goal of the Security Summit is to combat tax-related identity theft as a united front. Since its inception, the work of the Security Summit has helped protect millions of taxpayers against identity theft and prevented billions of dollars from being wrongly paid out to fraudsters.
As the IRS and Summit partners have strengthened their systems, identity thieves have increasingly shifted to stealing underlying tax and financial information from taxpayers, businesses and tax professionals to file authentic-looking fraudulent returns, hoping to evade traditional safeguards.
“The ongoing collaboration between the IRS and its Security Summit partners demonstrates the value of bringing private sector expertise and awareness to help improve how government works,” said IRS Chief Executive Office Frank J. Bisignano. “For more than ten years, both parties have benefited from this arrangement and will continue to do so into the future.”
The new Security Summit structure enhances collaboration with payroll partners, whose wage and withholding data has become an attractive target for cybercriminals. The five new work groups focus on improving early detection of suspicious activity, enhancing data protection practices and reducing the risk of compromised information used to facilitate fraud.
“Identity thieves continue to evolve, and so must we,” said IRS Return Integrity & Compliance Services Director Jim Clifford, who oversees the program. “By aligning our work across every stage of the tax lifecycle and strengthening collaboration with partners, including the payroll industry, we are better positioned to stop fraud earlier and protect taxpayers and the nation’s revenue.”
The new work groups include:
1. Pre-Filing: Early identification of potentially fraudulent information returns and suspicious behavior within payroll and tax administration processes that could enable identity theft or fraud, including closer coordination with payroll providers.
2. Forecasting: Identification of emerging schemes and proactive anticipation of threats before they are widely exploited.
3. Preventing: Implementation of proactive measures and tools designed to reduce opportunities for fraud, including strengthening safeguards across payroll systems and data exchanges.
4. Detecting and Reporting: Real-time identification of fraud indicators and enhanced intelligence-sharing among partners, including payroll industry stakeholders.
5. Responding: Deployment of technical controls and coordinated operational responses to security incidents.
In addition to the work groups, the Security Summit also utilizes the Coalition Against Scam and Scheme Threats, whose members focus on rapid assessment and response to time-sensitive threats.