More Than 99 Percent of Deceased Taxpayers’ Accounts Are Accurately Locked

Report Information

Summary

Our analysis of nearly 6.9 million taxpayers with a deceased lock placed on their account from October 2022 through October 2024 found that 99.8 percent of them were accurate. However, there were more than 13,500 taxpayers with a deceased lock erroneously placed on their account even though the SSA data contained no date of death for the taxpayer. Taxpayer Services management stated that erroneous locks can occur due to incorrect SSA data, taxpayer error, and IRS employee error. For example, an IRS employee may have incorrectly marked the primary taxpayer as deceased when they should have marked the secondary taxpayer as deceased. The SSA data may also incorrectly have a date of death for a taxpayer. Taxpayer Services management informed us that the IRS reversed the erroneous locks for the more than 13,500 taxpayers in June 2025. However, we identified two areas where improvements can be made to the IRS’s existing programming. For example, revised programming is needed to 1) ensure that a date of death is recorded on the secondary taxpayer’s account and 2) systemically reverse deceased locks when updated data are received from the SSA. Taxpayer Services management plans to implement programming changes that address our concerns in January 2026 and January 2027, respectively. While some taxpayers may have their accounts erroneously marked as deceased, some deceased taxpayers may not have their accounts locked accordingly. Our analysis of nearly 144 million taxpayers with a date of death reported by the SSA (as of September 2024) identified nearly 31,000 taxpayers (less than 1 percent) whose tax account was not locked. According to SSA data, these individuals passed away in Calendar Year 2022. Deceased taxpayer accounts that are not locked by the IRS could be used by fraudsters to file tax returns and obtain fraudulent refunds. Taxpayer Services management determined that these accounts were associated with a January 2023 SSA file that did not get processed. Taxpayer Services management expanded on our analysis and subsequently identified more than 24,000 additional taxpayers in the January 2023 file whose tax account was not locked. Taxpayer Services management ran an update to fix the date of death for the approximately 55,000 taxpayers in April 2025, which should lock the taxpayers’ accounts during the account update in January 2026.