Amber Neely
Users planning to file their taxes or check their tax payment history will soon be required to provide extensive documentation to a third-party company, including shots of utility bills and a video selfie.
Starting this summer, the IRS will require new and existing users to set up an ID.me account to file taxes, access tax records, create or view tax records, and more.
ID.me is a Virginia-based identification verification company that launched in 2010. The company is known for its work in the retail industry, where veterans, students, nurses, and first responders register accounts to receive discounts at various stores.
Now, the U.S. government is pairing up with ID.me, requiring users to submit government-issued ID, copies of utility statements, and biometric data to the privately-held company. According to Krebs on Security, 27 states also employ the company's services to help thwart identity theft.
The process, which an AppleInsider staffer had to go through, can take anywhere from five to ten minutes if everything goes off without a hitch. It requires a government-issued ID, proof of residence such as utility bills, and a selfie taken through the company's website using either a smartphone or a computer's webcam.
The selfie required isn't a photograph but rather a video that scans a user's face multiple times. Unfortunately, we found that the video selfie is hardly a perfect science.
Even though we stood in a fully-lit room, the video selfie was deemed too dark. In order to remedy it, we were forced to utilize a lightbulb in an unshaded lamp a few feet from our face.
However, once the video selfie is accepted, the process is nearly instantaneous, allowing users to immediately access their IRS.gov profile.
Should you need to go through the process, we highly suggest that you make sure you have your ID, copies of utility bills, a very well-lit room, and access to your smartphone for multi-factor verification before starting.
Krebs on Security had a different experience, which required their staffer to be verified through ID.me's live, in-person verification process. While they were able to get through it relatively quickly, it is far more likely that the process would take hours.
Again, we highly suggest making sure you have all documents on hand, and, preferably, make sure you start the process when you have some free time and well in advance before you need access to your account.
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24 Comments
In order to decline **Advance** Child Tax Credits, you have to use this. I was able to fairly easily but it never worked for my wife after multiple tries for days and we had to give up. The option to have someone verify you live never came up and leaving messages didn’t work either as no one ever replied. They need to fix it before forcing everyone to use it.
In theory a video call with the people who run elections, with you showing your ID (using biometrics, like your face or fingerprint) could be enough validation of identity to cast your vote online, securely, and with a likelihood of privacy (eg, you could vote by pressing a ballot button on your screen.) But this probably won't be realized for another 50 years, even though the required technology exists today, because the political will isn't here yet.
I would expect small jurisdictions with homogenous legal frameworks, perhaps like Singapore, to take the lead in this. They will probably do this in 20 years.
This must be the most complicated system I’ve seen for secure login. If you want to know how easy filing and checking tax return is in Sweden, you can take a look here:
https://www.skatteverket.se/servicelankar/otherlanguages/inenglish/individualsandemployees/declaringtaxesforindividuals/howtofileyourtaxreturn.4.7be5268414bea064694c620.html
We have been using a national service called BankID for 19 years now (the first offering of the service launched in 2003). It is actually a service from a private-sector company (sort of unusual for a Scandinavian solution). The company is an incorporated company co-owned by a long list of national banks (not all of the banks, but a lot of them). Why is the Swedish solution so easy and convenient to use? Because every citizen has got a Personal Identity Number (introduced in 1947). This number is unique to every citizen and Bank-ID utilizes this as the authenticating username.
I think this kind of system is impossible to implement in the US because of enough percentages of the population being either outright suspicious or mildly doubtful about the government in general. Even if only 0.5 % of the US population were upset about the privacy implications and refused to login to file taxes, it would still be 0.5 % of > 300 million people (excluding people who do not need to file taxes because they don’t have an employment or other income). Sweden on the other hand, is a small enough country using a 100 % trusted Personal Identity Number system with citizens who deeply trust their government (not talking about politicians, but rather: politically-neutral gov offices and services), with an unusually high penetration of IT services and nationally widespread internet broadband infrastructure, which makes these kind of solutions possible here.
In regards to taxes, we use Simplified tax returns in Sweden, which means: if your employer sent in your tax report correctly to the Swedish Tax Agency, all you need to do in terms of ”filing your taxes” is to either send a simple SMS with some minor content, and wait for an automated reply, or you choose any of the following ways (described in detail on the tax agency website link I posted previously): login to the tax agency website in a web browser or use their app. Once logged in, you confirm that your records and your personal information is correct, click, click, and it’s done. It takes about 5 minutes. Meanwhile in the US, Quicken wants to sell you computer software to make things less cumbersome. That said, you will of course have a very different experience if you need to file things outside of job income tax, like complementary income tax related to stock profits and other investments. People who are self-employed will, as always, need to do a lot more work with tax filings.
Here’s Adam Ruins Everything explaining how US tax filing could have been allowed to be simpler in general (but it isn’t):
https://youtu.be/Fj4anUL-LvY
The IRS already requires you to be able to provide specific numbers from specific lines in the previous years tax return as part of identity verification online. I don't see how taking a low quality video selfie + photos of utility bills is any better than that.