From your link:

>"The Internal Revenue Service signed a $7.25 million contract with Equifax last month. The no-bid contract, first reported by Politico, is for Equifax to provide the IRS with taxpayer and personal identity verification services. The contract stated that Equifax (EFX, -1.34%) was the only company capable of providing these services to the IRS, and it was deemed a “critical” service that couldn’t lapse."

The IRS in the US needs Equifax to provide tax payer and verification services? Seriously what does that even mean? The IRS bas no other way to verify citizens?

AFAIK in the US, you're not required to check in with local authorities when you move to a new city (contrary to many European countries where you need to notify them, else you'll be fined), so there's no official register the IRS could use to find all taxpayers... maybe that's the background.

USPS address forwarding is only good for six months.

The point is not how long mail forwarding is good for but rather the USPS already has up to date mailing address information for US citizens.

If the IRS is using Equifax for proper address verification as the OP states, then that information is already available via the USPS which is a government agency with real oversight.

I'd guess it is just outsourcing of a government function, you know as a way to save taxpayers money and increase government efficiency ... like those private prisons, private torturers, private plutonium processors, etc.

This is for something like the security questions when you reset your password except based on your financial records.

  - Do you recognize this street name?
  - Have you bought from this store?
  - How many mortgages did you co-sign?

Answering a set of these “knowledge” based questions is considered statistically probable proof that you’re you.

They’re derived from public records. Anyone who wants to hire the staff for legwork and pay all the individual municipalities for access can compile the same database.

But why would this any better or more effective than asking someone to verify information on their previous years tax filings such as specific line items etc?

This contract is a renewal of a previous contract with Equifax (which is why it was a "critical service that couldn't lapse"), and it involves Equifax giving data to the IRS, not the IRS giving your tax returns to Equifax.

The IRS is most certainly giving Equifax data or they wouldn't have sent inspectors there to verify the integrity of IRS data.

>Chief information officer Girza said the IRS sent inspectors to make sure no IRS data was compromised in the Equifax breach

http://www.snopes.com/2017/10/05/equifax-contract-irs/

That is nowhere close to evidence that Equifax had tax returns.

So I wonder what would happen if the IRS attempted to Eminent Domain-ify the data they needed.