IRS Says Cyberattacks on Taxpayer Accounts More Extensive Than Previously Reported

Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News

Tax data for about 700,000 households might have been stolen

The Internal Revenue Service said Friday that more than twice as many taxpayer accounts may have been hit by cybercriminals than the agency previously reported, with hackers gaining access to as many as 700,000 accounts and attempting to break into an additional 575,000.

The disclosure is the second revision by the IRS in the last six months and comes as Americans are preparing their tax returns for 2015.

Last August, the IRS said cybercrooks used stolen Social Security numbers and other data to gain access to taxpayer information for as many as 330,000 accounts, up from a number of 114,000 announced in May 2015.

The hackers targeted “Get Transcript,” an IRS application that allowed taxpayers to obtain tax return information for prior years, but not the main IRS database. Such information is valuable for thieves who hope to make false returns appear more legitimate and evade antifraud filters.

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