Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to illegal aliens, knowingly.
Since 1996, the IRS has issued what it calls Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to two classes of persons: 1) non-resident aliens who have a tax liability in the United States, and 2) aliens living in the United States who are “not authorized to work in the United States.”
The IRS has long known it was giving these numbers to illegal aliens, and thus facilitating their ability to work illegally in the United States. For example, the Treasury Inspector General’s Semiannual Report to Congress published on Oct. 29, 1999—nearly fourteen years ago—specifically drew attention to this problem.
“The IRS issues Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) to undocumented aliens to improve nonresident alien compliance with tax laws. This IRS practice seems counter-productive to the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s (INS) mission to identify undocumented aliens and prevent unlawful alien entry,” TIGTA warned in that long-ago report.
The inspector general’s 2012 audit report on the IRS’s handling of ITINs was spurred by two IRS employees who went to member of Congress "alleging that IRS management was requiring employees to assign Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN) even when the applications were fraudulent.”
In an August 2012 press release accompanying the audit report, TIGTA said the report “validated” the complaints of the IRS employees.
“TIGTA’s audit found that IRS management has not established adequate internal controls to detect and prevent the assignment of an ITIN to individuals submitting questionable applications,” said Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George. “Even more troubling, TIGTA found an environment which discourages employees from detecting fraudulent applications.”
Now for the staggering numbers
• 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to “unauthorized” alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga.
• 11,284 refunds worth a combined $2,164,976 to unauthorized alien workers at a second Atlanta address
• 3,608 worth $2,691,448 to a third
• 2,386 worth $1,232,943 to a fourth
• Oxnard, Calif, where the IRS sent 2,507 refunds worth $10,395,874
• An address in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the IRS sent 2,408 refunds worth $7,284,212
• An address in Phoenix, Ariz., where the IRS sent 2,047 refunds worth $5,558,608
• An address in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where the IRS sent 1,972 refunds worth $2,256,302
• An address in San Jose, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,942 refunds worth $5,091,027
• An address in Arvin, Calif., where the IRS sent 1,846 refunds worth $3,298,877.
Simply calculating just the ones mentioned above from the TIGTA audit report published last year, the IRS sent out over $85 million dollars to illegals in 2011.
Tens of thousands of those refunds not only went to illegal aliens, but to the same addresses, showing an astounding level of incompetence and/or corruption on the part of the IRS.
Topping it off and stated in the headline, the kicker is the IRS was fully aware and facilitated the fraud, by offering ITIN numbers to people "not authorized to work in the United States," and were known to be in the United states illegally.