BobKamman
Level 15

What’s interesting is that IRS doesn’t seem to have any requirements for its own agents or officers to verify taxpayer identity. In fact, in many cases the taxpayer is never seen or heard; the contact is with a practitioner proffering a Form 2848, and the practitioner isn’t asked for identity documents either. Just another case of “do as we say, not as we do.”

The instructions in Pub 1345 seem mostly directed at the problem of e-filing for undocumented workers who give a phony SSN to employers, but then file a return using a valid ITIN. Your question can be answered with another one: Are you planning to e-file the return? If not, the IRS doesn’t seem to care. I think that’s how Money magazine, for many years, got away with “shopping” the same set of facts to various preparers and coming up with various answers, all of which were wrong.

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