A tax credit that is supposed to help Americans pay for college has been abused by millions of taxpayers not attending school, including at least 250 prisoners, according to theI nspector General (IG) in charge of monitoring tax collection. This year, the scam may cost the country $3.2 billion.
The IG’s analysis of 2.1 million claims for the credit found 1.7 million filers have received the credit for students even though they provided “no supporting documentation that they attended an educational institution.” Among those improperly receiving the credit were over 63,000 students double-counted as dependents or spouses, 250 prisoners, and 84,754 students who did not have valid Social Security numbers (SSN). The Inspector General said to receive federal education aid, students generally must have valid SSNs, but for this tax credit, they did not. Unfortunately, the IRS has no effective process in place to identify false claims.
No comments:
Post a Comment