Your income and deductions, I certainly would not worry about. Your social security numbers are everywhere already. Do you trust your employer’s, bank’s and doctor’s databases any more than you trust the IRS?

Computer databases are computers at the access of any employee or potential hacker any where at anytime. Not much you can do about it. That’s just today’s technology you have to live with today—it goes with the territory.

I think we just have to hope for the best, and trust that the IRS will continut to do whatever they can to screen employees and subcontractors so that our personal information remains confidential. What other options with the IRS are available to us? I’m very concerned about identity theft, and so I limit my on-line purchases and pay for purchases using check or cash whenever possible and remain cautious about where I use my credit cards. I always purchase gas with a credit card at the pump, but I would never consider paying inside and turning my card over to some of those rascals who work in gas stations. I even like to pay cash at restaurants, so the card never leaves my sight…….So much can happen in those dark places where servers process credit card payments.

This is an easy fix. To protect our information, the IRS should stop collecting Federal Income Taxes.

Kurt, I don’t worry at all. Anyone with my social security number couldn’t use if to harm me in any way. I pay ALL my bills by credit cards. Anyone stealing my number off a credit card would find him/herself in trouble the first time they tried to use it.. If used on the internet, the credit card company would register their ISP….and the offenders computer #….. The credit card company would reject the purchase.. They would then go ater the culprit.

I

There’s plenty of solutions for the IRS. Mass suicide. Terrorist attacks. Heavy artillary Bio-warfare Diseases. 24/7 Hannity & Colmes exposure. Another ice age. Ken Lay Clone as CEO. Bounties. Free drugs. Donald Rumsfeld. Salary comensurate with performance.

The list goes on.

Ho hum. As if the IRS database was the only thing we have to worry about. Sorry, folks, your personal information is splattered all over the place out there. Look no farther than your local utilities. (Remember that case just a couple of years ago…Southwestern Bell, I think…where an employee printed out and walked off with about 200 customer records? Said employee and friends had a field day opening credit accounts with the stolen info.) It just the high tech age we live in. And even if all those various institutions had some pretty tough security measures in place, well, there’s still dumpster diving for those damned credit card applications. (Yes, I know there is a “no mail list ” for those too, but I don’t think most people even think about it.) Even if you shred your mail, nobody is preventing your mail from being stolen from your mailbox before you even see it. Nobody can stop some greedy postal worker from scooping those applications up by the dozens (or helping themselves to a wide variety of other information…tax documents, bank statements, and so forth.) Even if you think you can bypass the postal service danger by doing everything online, the very fact that it’s online lends itself to hackers. I don’t think I’d feel any better about identity theft just because the criminal was slightly brighter than your average thief. Unless you’re going to live in a cave, bury your money under a rock, pay cash for everything, and walk every place you go, somebody somewhere has access to your personal information.

I don’t like hackers, and I don’t like the IRS. I don’t like Social Security numbers either. Most of all, I hate taxes.

Abolish all of the above, and we shall live in harmony.

Shut it down!

Huckabee & Ron Paul both for flat taxes, Democrat canidates have not taken a public stance, McCain is against it.

http://www.fairtax.org this is the answer to alot of this country’s problems

This is most definately the answer to the IRS. If anyone would look at the budget they they operate on, they are over 11 BILLION DOLLARS that is just this year alone! Once abolished, there would be other areas of government that could easily be abolished or scaled back.
This would be a HUGE burden off of the people of this country. It would also free up instant money for every single person in this country, by eliminating any taxes on your paycheck, no taxes on any source of income whatsoever. .. So if you are like many I know that work 2 or more jobs just to make ends meet and support your family, you would get every single penny you earn, not let the federation oh, I mean our goverment take 1/3 of your check! You only pay taxes on what you spend, if you save or invest it and earn dividends/interest you don’t pay taxes on that income…

One other huge benefit, is companies don’t would not pay income taxes, this country could actually become competitive again in the market place!

I must gently quibble with my friend Pat Carpenter about the threat from postal workers. I agree with her that no one can stop a disgruntled postal worker from pilfering the mail, however such pilferage does not last long, nor go unpunished.

My dad was a regular letter carrier. He had a good idea who got what mail in terms of social security checks, (back when they came through the mail– most are direct deposited these days–) bank statements, retirement checks, credit card bills and other financial documents, since most of these documents arrive on a recurring basis. Many of the people on his route knew when to expect such documents, too. If they were more than a day or two late, the majority of the people on his route were on the phone to P.O., demanding to know where their item was, and if not there, on the phone to the issuing institution.

He was off recovering from surgery for several weeks once over the first of the month. No social security checks arrived. The people called the P.O. and the new hire sub said he had taken the mail out. The people called, and the issuing institutions said the items had been mailed. A postal inspector tailed the guy, and found out he was dumping all the mail down a sewer at the end of a cul-de-sac, and had done so for a week. Lucky for the public, (and himself) this dumb cluck hadn’t stolen anything, just “misdelivered” it. The mail was recovered. He was fined, then fired. (Since nothing was missing, he wasn’t prosecuted that I know of, although he obviously had tampered with the mail.) Naturally, the P.O. took credit, but it was actually the observant customers who ‘broke’ the case.

The easiest way to make sure the mail stays secure is to have 300 million eyes watching their own mail, and reporting anything suspicious. Nearly all of the things Pat says can happen involves opening the envelopes– any envelope which arrives opened should be scrutinized for any possible data theft. And don’t use resealable envelopes on your outgoing mail, and buy ’security’ dark inside printed ones for financial transactions. That’s also part of the reason for the perf open mail for statements– you can’t put a tear off strip back without someone knowing it was opened.

The best way we can avoid such mail mishaps is to lean on institutions to leave off complete social security numbers, and complete account numbers from printed matter going through the mail. Many places have already done so. Direct deposit gets back to computers and online issues– and despite this story, I’m more concerned about computers and identity theft than the mailman. When you can walk around with gigabytes of information on a jump drive in your pocket, going through mounds of mail sounds so 19th century.

I agree with Mark (9) we need a Fair Tax, not income taxes!

Thanks Robsmyth (11), it really baffles me when I tell people about it, they’ve never heard of it before, would be fair to every class of american, allow people to save money if they want without the stupid tax penalty. It would require businesses that sell to consumers to collect the tax and pay the government, but would require a fraction of ‘fed’ employees to over see this.

I have a friend that used to work for the IRS, he quit because of the unfair practices and that was a few years ago…

Time and time again, I have people that comment about part time jobs, and it just isn’t hardly worth it by the time taxes are taken out, which is so true. Then with the articles about Medicaid becoming insolvent in just a few short years and Social (in)Security being stolen to fund the government (which it was NEVER intended for) it won’t be there for me 30 years from now, why should I be forced to contribut to what amounts to another form of taxation, some could call it plain robbery, since you don’t have a choice and can’t opt out of it…

Then with the latest computer security concerns with the IRS and the REAL ID act (National ID card) requirements getting ready to take place, and we already know that passport files are not secure, Identity Theft is about to get an enormous boost in business… “We the people” need to force change in the downward sprial this country is heading.. before it is to late…

robsmith - you are voting for Obama and you hate taxes? What is up with that pal? He just voted to raise taxes on the middle class and will gladly keep gas prices high to pander to the environmentalists. I think you are confused.

Get rid of the IRS and have a national sales tax. The government shouldn’t be so informed about us.

If I had a penny for every entity that has my personal information I would be very well off. From doctors offices, mortgage companies, utility companies, credit card companies, to contractors hired by these entities in India and the like. I don’t remember authorizing for MasterCard to hire foreign companies who don’t speak english to manage my account….go figure. We can only hope our information is not stolen because if it is you are guilty no matter what….you will never fully recover.

Our personal information can be easily accessed by the average kid online these days. That’s the world we live in now….the information age….the good, the bad and the down right scary.

How about instead of trying to prevent people from getting our SSN, we just make it impossible for someone to get credit with just a name and ssn. I don’t understand why access to an id number should mean access to a line of credit. It should be as harmless as someone having access to your full name.

I don’t worry about stuff like this. It’s not that I don’t think it could happen to me, it’s just that I just don’t actively worry about it. There’s nothing any of us can do about it, and there’s nothing any of us can say that will make the government do anything other than try to control us and steal the money we work for to hand it out to people who do not work for it.

I am very surprised that this subject didn’t receive much reader comments, I guess people really are that selfish they don’t care to evoke change for the better.

(15) you bring up a very interesting point. I am a small employer, we use Quickbooks for our payroll, Intuit the company that owns Quickbooks uses people in India to handle support calls, problems, etc with PAYROLL of all things. They have access to your bank account information, which never has sat well with me.

Aside from the fact that any company you have credit with has your personal info, http://www.Fairtax.org would at least do away with it from the government standpoint, which I feel is he worst threat.