A senior Senate Republican said Tuesday that he wanted answers from the IRS on what he sees as lax protection of taxpayer data.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), citing reports from the Government Accountability Office and a Treasury inspector general, said that when the IRS “fails to adequately manage its computer systems, it creates opportunities for data to be lost, corrupted or stolen.”
GAO said last month that that it found 69 trouble spots in IRS systems, Grassley said in a letter to the IRS commissioner, John Koskinen. Those soft spots, Grassley said, had been identified anywhere from one to four years ago. Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration has added that data security is the IRS’s top management problem this year.
“Protecting taxpayer’s information and ensuring efficient and appropriate administration of the tax system are of paramount concern. This is especially so in today’s world with identify thefts on the rise,” Grassley said in his letter to Koskinen.
Grassley, a former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said the IRS’s problem areas included failing to patch weak servers or databases quickly, and inadequate password policies.
Koskinen has said the IRS takes identity theft very seriously, but added that budget cuts to the agency have hurt its ability to combat return fraud.