Refund Fraud? - Real-Time Solution! Digital Security Borrowed from the VAT (Brazil, Quebec, & Belgium)

Authors

Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Boston University School of LawFollow

Author granted license

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-7-2012

ISSN

1048-3306

Publisher

Tax Analysts

Language

en-US

Abstract

This article provides support for a proposal to eliminate refund fraud in the U.S. by turning Forms W-2, and 1099 into self-certified/ self-authenticated tax documents. The proposal suggests that a “digital signature” of these documents should be taken after they are completed. The signature should then be made part of the final document.

This proposal was initially advanced in Refund Fraud? Real-Time Solution! The underlying premise of that article was that the US could dramatically reduce, if not eliminate, refund fraud if it borrowing digital security techniques from the VAT. The article did not however, explain or expand upon these techniques from within the VATs where they were developed. This article takes up the VAT side of that analysis.

VAT frauds frequently manipulate documents for gain, and VAT jurisdictions have spent a considerable amount of time and energy devising effective and efficient methods for determining if a document is legitimate (or original). The strong suggestion is that the IRS should look to the VAT to solve refund fraud, because even though the tax is different, the administrative problem is the same. The refund fraud problem is essentially document verification problem. The VAT is very good at document verification. The IRS can learn from the VAT.

This paper looks at three VAT jurisdictions, Brazil, Quebec and Belgium, and explains how they use technology to solve document authentication problems. In each case a tax fraud is facilitated by false documentation, and the administrative response is to use technology to certify the documents and stop the fraud. In Brazil the fraud arises in the context of internal cross-border B2B transactions. In Quebec and Belgium the fraud is skimming profits from B2C cash and debit/credit card transactions.

Recommended Citation

Richard T. Ainsworth, Refund Fraud? - Real-Time Solution! Digital Security Borrowed from the VAT (Brazil, Quebec, & Belgium) , in 66 Tax Notes 533 (2012).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/1454