MISMO Seeks Input on Consent Language for Tax Transcripts to Comply with Taxpayer First Act

MISMO®, the mortgage industry standards organization, seeks industry participants to collaborate on developing standardized language to gain consent for use of tax transcripts by stakeholders throughout the mortgage process.

This effort is being done to comply with the Taxpayer First Act, which was signed into law on July 1. The Taxpayer First Act includes a provision that the taxpayer must provide their permission (“consent”) for the information to be shared. This component of the law, which must be implemented by December 28, does not yet state how the consent should be obtained or documented, nor has the Internal Revenue Service provided guidance on how this should be managed.

“It is important for the mortgage industry to develop a consensus solution to ensure compliance with the new law,” said Rick Hill, Executive Vice President of MISMO and MBA Vice President of Technology. “Given the likelihood that many different industry functions may be affected by this requirement, MISMO is seeking collaboration from the industry to avoid any unnecessary disruption to lenders, servicers, and consumers ahead of the December deadline.”

Using MISMO’s collaborative development process, industry participants will address the requirement to obtain consent to share tax information and data with multiple stakeholders in the mortgage process. Collaboration may include creating appropriate methods, forms, language and tactics to ensure that parties that receive tax data from the IRS have taxpayer consent to share the information with other participants in the mortgage process.

Any standards created will be made available for public comment prior to being finalized. Workgroup participants do not have to be members of MISMO to participate, but only MISMO members will be able to vote on the new standards.

For more information, and to participate in this collaborative, industrywide effort, visit http://www.mismo.org/get-started/participate-in-a-mismo-workgroup/taxpayer-consent-dwg.

For more information about MISMO, visit www.mismo.org.