There are three certainties in this world: death, taxes, and someone somewhere trying to steal sensitive information. Tax season is a great reminder that your tax returns contain just the type of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) that data thieves are after.
While Steel City Shredding can’t help you file your federal, state, and local taxes, we can assist you by properly shredding tax documents containing PII. As Pittsburgh’s most secure tax document shredding solution, we securely dispose of old tax files for individuals and tax firms.
During tax season, sensitive documents exchange hands at a massive size and scale, increasing the risk of exposure. The intimate details of your life found in a Form 1040, 1098, or W2 can provide data thieves the information they need to file fraudulent tax returns and receive tax refunds. Data thieves can also apply for government benefits or access and drain your bank account.
If sensitive information is stolen from your tax documents because of exposure or improper disposal, it can wreak havoc on your life, taking many hours and endless calls to undo the damage. Shredding tax returns that no longer need to be retained keeps your personal information protected. And while you might be tempted to use a personal shredder or pay for shredding services at an office supply chain, we’ll demonstrate later on in this article how inefficient and risky those options can be.
IRS Breach: A Tax Shredding Cautionary Tale
In 2024, a former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) contractor, Charles Littlejohn, was sentenced to five years in federal prison for leaking the tax returns of numerous public figures, including Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and President Donald Trump. Between 2018 and 2020, Littlejohn passed the data onto publications like ProPublica that ran dozens of high-profile articles exploring the insights gleaned from the tax returns.
As part of its investigation, the U.S. Treasure Department examined the IRS’s document secure tax document shredding protocols.
It found that the IRS was negligent with other taxpayer information in its possession due to improper disposal of physical documents.
According to its report, the IRS was using a national vendor to shred and dispose of documents at 387 of its 514 facilities. Of the remaining 127, 17 facilities used local shredding companies. Of the last 110, the IRS could not confirm whether there were any tax document shredding and disposal protocols in place.
The report detailed nightmare scenarios.
In Andover, Massachusetts, the IRS location had no contract for any professional shredding services. Regular trash containers were used to dispose of tax documents with Personally Identifiable Information.
At an Ogden, Utah location, an open trash can had a sign affixed to it that read “Classified Trash Only.”
These startling revelations are a harrowing reminder that secure tax document shredding services are no small matter.
Local tax preparers rely on a sterling reputation and word of mouth referrals. A document breach would damage your standing in the public eye, possibly draw media scrutiny, and endanger relationships with longstanding clients (not to mention potential clients considering you).
The same applies to national tax firms. Even years after a data exposure, the reputational stain can still stick to your name, especially when it’s just a Google search away. At the end of day, if tax clients can’t trust you with their Personally Identifiable Information, then they’ll doubt your expertise and take their business elsewhere.
If your tax firm also works with high net worth individuals and businesses in the public eye, it presents an even more appealing target to data thieves. Plus, the Littlejohn IRS breach shows that contractors and third party vendors can be a point of vulnerability. So if you’re a tax firm that does business with other companies who process your data, ask if they have a secure tax document shredding plan in place.
Regardless of your client’s notoriety, every single taxpayer deserves maximum protection and vigilance. By putting a secure tax document shredding service in place with Steel City Shredding, you can prevent the sloppy security that plagued the IRS.
Shredding Ensures Security. Security Ensures Speed.
Everyone wants the same things during tax season: get my taxes done fast and done right. They want the least amount of hassle and the most convenience possible. But if you want true speed, you’ll need your security protocols in place.
If you’re a tax firm, a breach or compliance violation could tie your business down with hours devoted to responding to the threat, dealing with possible legal action, and addressing the matter with your customers.
If you’re an individual taxpayer, tax season is already stressful enough, requiring you to get all the necessary documents together. If you’re self-employed or run your own business, you know the hassle of making sure your books are in order. With all that in mind you don’t want old tax documents to hang around your house any longer than need be.
Let’s go over the options available to individual taxpayers and tax firms.
Throw Tax Documents in the Garbage
You definitely don’t want to toss your sensitive tax forms and tax returns from prior years in the trash. Tearing them by hand or folding them up doesn’t do enough to protect sensitive data like your name, social security number, date of birth, address, income, etc. Whatever you do, don’t go this route, like the IRS did.
Burn Tax Documents
While burning tax documents does adequately destroy them, it’s a time-consuming method. You either need an outdoor fire pit or secure bin to make it work, and any time you introduce fire into the equation, you run the risk of it spreading.
You’ll spend more time than you want trying to start the fire, keep it burning, and watch over it. Plus, you have to deal with the toxic fumes, messy cleanup, and any disgruntled neighbors or adjoining offices.
For all those reasons, burning tax documents won’t give you the safety and convenience you’re looking for.
Shred Tax Documents with a Personal Shredder
Personal shredders will slice your tax documents into long, thin strips, making it easier to reassemble them. You also have to spend the time manually feeding the documents into the shredder, which takes you away from other activities your time is better spent with.
A personal shredder may not be powerful enough to handle your tax files. Many tax documents are bound or stapled together, so you’ll also have to rip those out. And if they have a binding, you’ll need to find a way to prevent it from clogging up your shredder or causing it to go on the fritz. The frustration isn’t worth it.
Shred Tax Documents at an Office Supply Store
While a local Office Depot, Staples, Fedex, or UPS may offer shredding services, their staff may not be properly trained on secure tax document disposal like an NAID AAA certified tax document disposal service like Steel City Shredding. Or, if they have self-shredding kiosks, you’re left wondering whether the shreddings are being securely disposed of after you’re finished.
Level of training and the proper protocols really do make a difference, and if you don’t have insight into either at these locations, are you prepared to place such sensitive information in their hands?
The Most Secure, Convenient Solution: Steel City Shredding
Priority #1 in secure tax document disposal is knowing who you’re dealing with. Knowing their competency. Knowing their processes. Knowing their reputation.
Steel City Shredding checks all those boxes and more, with the right combination of convenience, expertise, and security for both individual taxpayers and tax firms.
Ultra-Secure Industrial Shredders
Steel City Shredding employs industrial shredders that cut paper into unrecognizable bits rather than long strips. We also mix your shreddings with the shreddings from other clients, then bale them together, preventing any reconstruction. Afterward, the bales of shredded paper are sustainably recycled.
NAID AAA Certification
The National Association for Information Destruction (NAID) is under the umbrella of the International Secure Information Governance and Management Association (i-SIGMA).
Those long names and acronyms may not hold much meaning to the general public. But in the realm of secure tax document shredding, they mean everything. i-SIGMA sets the industry standards for paper shredding and e-waste disposal. The i-SIGMA NAID AAA Certification verifies that Steel City Shredding complies with all known data protection laws (HIPAA, FACTA, GLBA, etc.).
Steel City Shredding earned our NAID AAA Certification (and continue to maintain it) through scheduled and surprise audits by accredited security professionals. Our membership in i-SIGMA NAID also represents a commitment to rigorous training and ongoing development of our certified shredding specialists. Someone cannot decide to become a shredding specialist on a Sunday and then start the job on Monday.
So when you work with Steel City Shredding, you know exactly who you’re dealing with, and it’s why we’re the secure tax document shredding solution of choice in the Pittsburgh region.
Convenient Tax Document Shredding Service
Steel City Shredding gives you multiple ways to securely shred your sensitive tax documents.
Mobile, On-Site Shredding: Steel City Shredding will come to your home or office with our mobile shredding truck. We’ll shred all your tax documents, and you can witness the disposal process firsthand.
Offsite Shredding: You can bring your tax documents to our office at 3220 Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh for a one-time purge and we’ll shred your documents. Just like with mobile shredding service, you can watch the shredding process as it happens.
Regardless of the option chosen, you’ll receive an official certificate of destruction that verifies all your sensitive tax documents have been permanently destroyed.
Transparent Tax Document Shredding Service
When we say Steel City Shredding is built on upfront pricing and no hidden fees, we mean it. Just look at what our customers have to say.
“Absolutely wonderful customer service! Highly recommend calling this company first for any of your shred needs. The service was friendly and very helpful, pricing had no hidden cost and was very reasonable.” – Denese G.
“The process on the invoice was the same as what was quoted, no extra charges. I will highly recommend them to anyone needing shredding in the future.” – Jessica C.
“Very professional, timely and cost effective in comparison to other companies.” – Marilyn S.
Artificial Intelligence & Tax Document Reconstruction
Artificial Intelligence offers boundless opportunities for document reconstruction. On the positive side, this will help historians, conservators and archivists to solve challenges on reading, interpreting, and recovering information from old texts. On the negative side, AI allows data thieves to reconstruct sensitive documents for nefarious purposes. Instead of taking days to piece a tax document back together, it could take mere minutes.
For example, a group of Berlin scientists created ePuzzler, which allows for the virtual restoration of documents that have been torn, cut, or damaged. They successfully reconstructed 45 million pages of secret police documents left over from Cold War-era East Germany. They did it to help historians get deeper insights into that divisive time. Many Germans also used the information to find closure about relatives or learn more about their nation’s past.
But what happens if this type of technology gets in the wrong hands? Documents that were shredded with a strip cut shredder would be even more vulnerable. Data thieves could reassemble documents, obtain Personally Identifiable information, then use it to steal identities or apply for tax refunds. Even worse, they could use AI to mimic official documents, making it even more difficult to separate what’s authentic and what’s fraudulent.
The world we live in can make your head spin, but you can have confidence that when you shred your tax documents with Steel City Shredding, you will not be exposing them to possible reassembly. Remember, our industrial shredders cut paper into miniscule pieces, making it impossible for AI technology to reassemble it. The shreddings are then baled up and responsibly recycled back into a pulp before they’re remade into new paper products.
Request A One-Time Tax Document Purge
As the IRS breach example and AI advancements have shown, neglecting to securely shred tax documents in a high-tech environment can create worst-case scenarios in the blink of an eye.
So don’t leave it up to chance and become the cautionary case study. To discuss our NAID AAA certified tax document shredding solutions, call 412-496-1240 or contact us for a quote.