IRS Audit question

[Dalai Pookah]

For the first time, in an IRS audit, the auditor requested copies of participants' drivers licenses to verify dates of birth. Has anyone else experienced this? While this is a creative way to verify DoB, it seems to be sort of an itrusion as I don't berlieve most employers capture this information. They may visually verify the license when completing the I-9, but not capture the image.

Just curious to see if this is a new ask, generally, or merely confined to one office.

[david rigby]

Is the auditor stating, or implying, that the ER should be doing something like this, as a normal action, to verify DOB for its EEs?

[Dalai Pookah]

The auditor merely asked for copies of the participants' driver's licenses to verify birthdates. I remarked that this must be a new requirement, since no auditor has boldly, gone there before.

[MoJo]

I would tell the auditor that they are free to ask employees for copies of their DL, but the employer isn't required to produce (or obtain) anything that it doesn't already have.

[Peter Gulia]

What MoJo says: An examinee has no duty to furnish records the examinee does not have.

And no inference should follow from an absence of a record the examinee was not required to keep.

Likewise, no inference should follow from an absence of a record properly destroyed under a proper records-retention plan.

Turning on the text of the information document request or the examiner’s less formal question, some incautious responses might be inapt if the employer/administrator has copies of workers’ identity documents.

In those circumstances, the examinee might want its lawyer’s advice about how, exactly, to respond.

This is not advice to anyone.

[LPHR]

Not everyone (like my 23 year-old son) or his almost 60 year-old uncle drives. Just felt the need to comment based on the face value of the question. Seems like the company would use documentation for I-9 purposes to verify age eligibility.

[Peter Gulia]

Some employers still have some employees hired long enough ago that United States public law generally did not require an employee to check a person’s eligibility to work in the U.S.

And an organization might never have made an I-9 record if the worker never was hired as an employee (for example, because she was a partner or other self-employed individual).

Consider too that if an I-9 record was made and had been kept, it might have been destroyed under a records-retention plan. See, for example, 8 C.F.R. § 274a.2 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-8/section-274a.2.

This is not advice to anyone.

[Artie M]

Not that this helps but I looked at the I-9 instructions earlier this year and unless they have changed, employers are not required to make copies of the Acceptable Documents provided to them.  They just have to complete the appropriate sections of the I-9 using the info garnered from the Acceptable Document.   The instructions said the "employer may" make copies.  It did say if you retained the copy that you have to provide it to a littany of agencies, but interestingly enough (at least I thought so)  the instructions didn't list the IRS in that list of agencies.  

[david rigby]

Form and Instructions for I-9:  https://www.uscis.gov/i-9