The IRS said it’s continuing a voluntary pilot program that will provide temporary identification numbers to taxpayers in Georgia, Florida and Washington, D.C., in an effort to thwart above-average tax fraud by identity thieves in those areas.
Taxpayers can sign up for the six-digit personal identification numbers on this site: IRS.gov/getanippin.
But once they do, they won’t be able to file their tax returns without using that PIN number, in addition to their Social Security numbers, the IRS said.
People who opt in to the new system also will be locked into the new system in the future, the agency said. Participants will receive a new ID number each year in the mail or electronically, the agency said.
“One of the key objectives of the program is to add an additional layer of protection to taxpayers who live in areas where tax-related identity theft is more prevalent,” said IRS Spokesman Mark Green.
He said Georgia, Florida and Washington, D.C., have been hot spots for identity theft against taxpayers.
“A lot of the times, people who have filed don’t even know that they have been victims,” said Green.
In a cyber attack last month on the IRS, hackers used stolen Social Security numbers to create 101,000 personal identification numbers to be used in connection with filing electronic tax returns. The identity thieves had attempted to use 464,000 Social Security numbers in the security breach.
That attack did not affect the program in which the IRS assigns PIN numbers to identity theft victims or to people who sign up for a number.
The IRS rolled out that PIN number program starting in 2011 for victims of identity theft, but began expanding it in 2014 to some taxpayers in Georgia, Florida and the national capital who were not victims of identity theft. It became available to all taxpayers in those areas last year.
Green said the IRS issued the PIN numbers to more than 770,000 taxpayers in 2013, and to more than 1.2 million in 2014.
