"Scary stuff" UPDATE: the hack was TurboTax (NEWER UPDATE)

[quakerboy]

94. Yes, It would be more secure. Not perfectly secure, *more* secure.

Your data it wouldn't be more secure from the various government spy agencies. But its not secure from those ****'s anyway. I guarantee that when you submit your return, even if you use the snail mail and pieces of paper you filled out with a pen, out of sight of any webcam or smartphone, the IRS then enters that info into computers. To which NSA, CIA, et al have already backdoored their access. So having the IRS do the return to start with would not make your Tax return any more or less secure in that regard. Same point applies to your comment re mail.

As for computer hacking... I challenge you to show that the TurboTax held info is more secure than the IRS info, from "anyone who can hack a computer". I would be willing to bet that the IRS databases are more secure than the Turbotax Corporate databases. So having the IRS do it instead of turbo tax would increase the data security.

Would having the IRS do what it does anyway make your data perfectly secure? No. But it would, pretty much by definition, increase the security of the data to cut a third party (with a corporate bottom line) out of the process.