The tax agency said 295,000 taxpayer transcripts were also targeted but access was not successful.
The agency said in May the tax
return information of about 114,000 U.S. taxpayers had been illegally
accessed by cyber criminals over the preceding four months, with another
111,000 unsuccessful attempts made.
The
IRS then revealed in August a new review had identified 220,000
additional incidents where data was breached and another 170,000
suspected failed attempts to gain access to taxpayer data.
From
February to May, attackers had sought to gain access to personal tax
information through the agency's "Get Transcript" online application,
which calls up information from previous returns, the tax collection
agency said in May.
The
nine-month long review, which looked into incidents dating back to the
launch of the "Get Transcript" application in January 2014 through May
2015, was conducted by Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration, the IRS said on Friday.
The
"Get Transcript" web application has been offline since the incident
was discovered, the agency said on Friday, adding that mailings to the
affected taxpayers will start on Feb. 29.
CNN reported in May that the IRS believed that the data theft originated in Russia.
By: Reuters.
Reporting: Sudarshan Varadhan (Bengaluru).
Editing: Sriraj Kalluvila.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations &
Research Unit, Flagship Records.
For The #FacebookTeam