Time thieves

Two things you can never get back: time and teeth. The proliferation of refund fraud means that before sending you a refund, the US Internal Revenue Service requires you to verify your tax return. The IRS letter directs you online – first to verify your identity via a third party commercial company called id.me and *then* to verify the return at the IRS site. I had to do the personal part of this via video call. This meant first typing in a load of details I wouldn’t normally disclose on a first date, then a 20-minute wait until an obviously bored human avatar got on the call and had me hold up the various documents. Only then could I proceed to the IRS site to answer questions like “what number appears on line 31a?” Shadow work, to be sure. Like others, I’m worried about the potential consequences of being a data hostage to this unknown company at government behest. But first…we talk very little about the hours we all spend doing stuff like this because so many trust mechanisms are…