Get Transcript data breach more than three times as big, IRS announces

The breach of the IRS’s Get Transcript system in May was much larger than first reported, the IRS admitted on Monday. An additional 220,000 taxpayers had their tax return data stolen from the site, approximately tripling the number of victims to 334,000. According to the IRS, the criminals obtained enough taxpayer-specific information from outside sources that they were able to get through the Get Transcript authentication process.

In the statement, the IRS said it was “moving aggressively to protect taxpayers whose” accounts may have been compromised. It is notifying affected taxpayers and will also offer free credit monitoring services and give those taxpayers an opportunity to enroll in the special identity theft filing program, where taxpayers get confidential identity protection personal identification numbers (IP PINs) to use to file their returns. (In related news, last week the IRS announced that it will not assert that free identify protection services provided to victims of a data breach such as this one are taxable income to the recipients.)

The IRS shut down the online Get Transcript service when the breach was discovered and the service is still unavailable. Transcripts are available using the Get Transcript by Mail service.

—Sally P. Schreiber (sschreiber@aicpa.org) is a JofA senior editor.