The IRS will soon require payers to provide selfies in order to provide more secure access to certain tools and applications on its website.
The additional layer of facial recognition will be needed from the summer of 2022 onward in order to log in to the IRS website and access the Child Tax Credit Update Portal, check online accounts, get tax transcripts, or view online payment agreements.
However, the IRS said people will not be required to submit a selfie or go through a facial recognition software in order to submit their tax returns.
Previously, a simple username and password were all that was required to access the website, but starting later this year, taxpayers will need to create an account with the identity verification company ID.me by providing a government-issued document with a photo, such as a driver’s license or passport, and also take a video selfie of themselves using a phone or computer.
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“Identity verification is critical to protect taxpayers and their information,” IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in a statement. “The IRS has been working hard to make improvements in this area, and this new verification process is designed to make IRS online applications as secure as possible for people.”
Any existing IRS accounts will work until the summer, and then taxpayers will have to create a new account with ID.me in order to continue accessing the full range of tools on the IRS website.
ID.me is a technology company that provides secure identity verification by comparing a government-issued photo ID provided by a user with a video selfie submitted. Alongside the photo ID and video selfie, taxpayers will also have to provide ID.me with an email address and Social Security number to be fully verified.
Some privacy advocates expressed criticism regarding the new IRS policy, saying that it would result in sensitive personal information being abused.
“Very s***** short-term decision making which will only lead to further ruin for Americans when their data is inevitably breached,” tweeted Jackie Singh, director of technology and operations at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.
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“Now that Facebook has ‘deleted’ their data I guess it needs to come from elsewhere,” she added.
