WASHINGTON — One more tax-season dread: A week before the filing deadline, Treasury watchdogs said Monday that poor controls over IRS computers could allow a disgruntled employee, agency contractor or outside hacker to steal taxpayers’ confidential information.
Indeed, a hacker might even “gain full control of the IRS network,” said a report Monday from the office of the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.
Investigators did not cite specific cases of wrongdoing within the IRS, which processes 137 million tax returns. But they suggested a lack of review means someone could get sensitive information and no one would ever know.
The report comes amid increasing scrutiny of the IRS and problems posed by security concerns within the system and identity-theft threats from outside:
• The independent IRS Oversight Board, in a report last month, outlined about $32 million in spending it said was needed to enhance the tax agency’s security.
• Separately, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman will testify before Congress on Thursday about scams in which people are fooled into revealing their Social Security numbers and other confidential information by e-mails and phone calls purported to be coming from the IRS.
An IRS statement said that the agency had “taken a number of steps to improve the control and monitoring of routers and switches.”
