I’ve long had an IRS EFT (electronic funds transfer) account for paying federal taxes. There are three alternative channels provided for logging in to it: PIV/CAC, LOGIN.GOV, and ID.me. For reasons that I don’t recall I chose LOGIN.GOV.

A few days ago I found that I needed a general IRS account, so set about establishing one. To my surprise ID.me is the ONLY login channel for it.

So I set about establishing an ID.me account. That was a tedious process. Among other things I had to provide a video selfie and a photo of my drivers license.

Now both the ID.me and the general IRS accounts are established with long strong passwords for each of them. Sure glad that I have password manager apps on my iPhone and MacBook.

Don't forget two-factor authentication. This is the lynch pin that will keep you safe.

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A few days ago I found that I needed a general IRS account, so set about establishing one. To my surprise ID.me is the ONLY login channel for it.

That does seem strange.

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Originally posted by parabellum:
Don't forget two-factor authentication. This is the lynch pin that will keep you safe.

Two-factor authentication was a requirement for establishing both of the IRS accounts.

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Originally posted by Some Shot:

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A few days ago I found that I needed a general IRS account, so set about establishing one. To my surprise ID.me is the ONLY login channel for it.

That does seem strange.

It does. So, you already had an IRS EFT (electronic funds transfer) account for paying federal taxes. Now, they ask you to create a separate IRS account? So, the EFT account is not from the IRS? Because if it is, then something is fishy.

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Originally posted by 12131:

you already had an IRS EFT (electronic funds transfer) account for paying federal taxes. Now, they ask you to create a separate IRS account? So, the EFT account is not from the IRS? Because if it is, then something is fishy.

I no longer own the small business, but I do recall that when I paid payroll taxes for my employees, there was an EFT account that could only be used for payroll tax deposit. For anything else that was IRS-related, there was a different account.

The EFT account replaced the payroll deposit coupon books that were used earlier, to deposit payroll taxes at the bank.

I pay my quarterly taxes via IRS website and use IDme.

You can do it all through that one site.

As I see it things work ok now. I will pass at this time. Have any of you been to the doctor when the computer is down? Sit your ass in the waiting room until the IT guy shows up. No thanks.

I was paying my quarterly estimates with whichever credit card processor the IRS used with the lowest fee, and I used a card that got more than that in cash back. So when the processing fee was 1.84% and my Amex paid 2% cash back, I netted money from it and got an extra month float. But then last week when I had to pay, the lowest fee they had was 2.49%, so no longer a great deal, though the fee is still tax deductible.

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Originally posted by 12131:

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Originally posted by Some Shot:

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A few days ago I found that I needed a general IRS account, so set about establishing one. To my surprise ID.me is the ONLY login channel for it.

That does seem strange.

It does. So, you already had an IRS EFT (electronic funds transfer) account for paying federal taxes. Now, they ask you to create a separate IRS account? So, the EFT account is not from the IRS? Because if it is, then something is fishy.

They didn’t ask me to create a separate IRS account – my own needs drove me. I’ve used the IRS EFT account for years to pay my federal taxes. If the EFT account was bogus the IRS would be on my case big time.

My new general purpose IRS account reports no arrears so the EFT account is legitimate.

ID.me has become a standard across many platforms to prove you are who you say you are, especially if you claim to be a government employee.

VA forced Veterans with a VA logon to one or the other of those sites.

I went with LOGIN.GOV this time thinking the government may eventually push for their site, rather than a private one.

The ID.ME site appeared to me to also have slightly lower requirements.