[wetibbe]

When I went on line to use the Turbo-tax website to complete my Federal I went through the many sections on income and financial. It went smoothly up to a point. In the section about interest, dividends, investments I entered the data from some 1099-R forms. One in particular was an investment company. I entered the name, address, Federal ID and the balance of information. I had to phone twice for more information. Then I got to the end and "review". Turbo-tax said there were problems that needed to be fixed. One was the zip code of the company. I had the zip code from the 1099 and also from a phone call to them. Would NOT work. Stalled. Then a message, - " You must use the payers zip code in your state". There is no such zip code and they are not in my state.

The main point here is that when I called the investment company which has the office on Kansas City, I got a rep in Houston. After giving my account number, social security and DOB I explained the problem. The rep said: Yes I see here on your form *( tax return - 1040 ) what you have entered. Yikes !!!!!!! Then I realized that he had full access to my tax return on his computer. And could bring it up any time including my name, address, status, income, sources, investments, dividends, pension. banks. If he could do it there are places scattered all over the USA that can access my personal information too. That is frightening.

Embezzlers, crooked employees, thieves are always being caught. Counting the hundreds of thousands of people who work in these institutions, my personal information is readily available to them with the click of a mouse. How easy is it to steal identities ? And social security numbers that can be exploited or sold. The Turbo-Tax forum is full of complaints from users about Turbo-Tax freezing their accounts and demanding fax proofs of identity. It must be very prevalent.