Following advocacy efforts by ABA and other financial and housing trade associations, the IRS today announced that it would postpone the implementation of new security requirements for tax professionals and tax transcript vendors that transmit data through the IRS. The new Secure Access process — which was announced by the agency less than a month ago — includes identify proofing, financial verification and mobile phone verification. The IRS has not set a new implementation date.
In a joint comment letter, ABA and others pointed out that the short implementation timeline could lead to disruptions in mortgage lending activities, as lenders rely on tax transcript information from the IRS for residential mortgage originations, and many vendors would not have ample time to make the technological changes required to comply with the new requirements. The groups also said that IRS’ proposed use of mobile phones for multi-factor authentication would cause businesses to break “clean room” policies that prohibit the use of mobile devices in workspaces to ensure a secure environment for the processing of sensitive information.
