Progress on IRS forms and protecting your SSN
The IRS’s Social Security Number Elimination and Reduction (SSN/ER) Program has made significant strides in eliminating or reducing the use of SSNs within our systems, forms, notices and letters where the collection or use of the SSN was not necessary. We met the OMB 07-16 mandate to complete a review of the use of SSNs in all IRS Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and non-FISMA systems. We also identified instances where the collection or use of the SSN was not necessary.
As of December 30, 2010, we successfully removed or redacted the SSN from 107 IRS Forms and 164 IRS Notices and Letters. In 2011, we built upon this effort with the initiation of a Barcoding Project for notices.
Barcoding Project
The Social Security Number Elimination and Reduction: Barcoding Project is a key component of the IRS’ continuous effort to protect taxpayer’s personally identifiable information. July 2011, marks the IRS’s elimination of SSNs from 13 IRS Notices, which will not request a payment remittance to be submitted and have an annual mail-out volume of more than 11 million. These 13 notices will only show the last four digits of the taxpayers SSN. This effort will ensure that the taxpayers’ SSN is not fully visible and discernible. We will continue to add additional taxpayer notices over the next few years. This protection will not require any change in behavior from the taxpayer when interacting with the IRS.
Full SSN not used on Economic Stimulus letters
We successfully redacted Social Security numbers from all 122, 757, 212 Economic Stimulus Letters (Notice 1378) sent to taxpayers.
Full SSN not used on Automated Collection System letters
We redacted Social Security numbers on numerous taxpayer sensitive, collection and enforcement related letters. During FY 2008 and FY 2009, more than 10 million collection notices were revised and in some cases SSNs were completely removed.
Compliance management tool tracks progress
We developed e-Trak, a tool to track, monitor and report ongoing SSN elimination and reduction compliance progress IRS-wide. This tool houses all SSN ER compliance data and establishes an electronic case file for those systems, notices, forms and letters using SSNs.
