Gov. John Kasich vetoed 44 items in the new state budget, and one of them related to the sometimes difficult online tests that taxpayers getting refunds had to fill out to prove their identities.
The tax department and legislators got thousands of complaints that the online identity tests were asking for old information that was hard to recall – such as past addresses and details about now-adult children.
So lawmakers proposed the required information be no more than five years old. But Tax Commissioner Joe Testa says that simply wouldn’t have worked.
“In the personal income tax side, for example, we couldn’t ask for a copy of your birth certificate unless you were four years old. There was just some very, totally unworkable aspects of it,” Testa says.
And Testa says the five year window would have been a problem for all but brand-new businesses too. Testa says the tough tests have caught tens of millions of dollars in potential tax fraud.