KBA Authentication Issues

Once in a blue moon, RightSignature with KBA enabled will fail to verify one of my client's identities. I'm not talking about they get to the KBA question step and fail, I'm talking about they enter their identifying information and the KBA process cannot "find them" and verify their identity to proceed to ask the right questions.

This happens rarely (less than 5% of the time), but it is still a hassle and if it happens, I usually end up immediately advising the MFJ couple to go the hand-signing route in the interest of efficiency, as I don't have time to investigate through trial and error. Of course, in a perfect world, it would work 100% of the time for those who want to use it.

There is a common theme. All of the times it has occurred, it happened to the wife in a MFJ return. Never the husband. Once I did spend the time to investigate and found in that situation that the wife commonly goes back a different last name than what is on file with the Social Security Administration. i.e. goes by "Heinz-Kerry" but is "Kerry" per the SSA. Once we used what the SSA has on file, she verified instantly and could proceed to the next step.

Does a similar problem exist with DocuSign? Anyone else experiencing something similar?

I have had one KBA reject and never figured out why, the taxpayers just manually signed rather than attempting again (I think we have 2 or 3 attempts before they have to wet ink it).

Sounds like clients like this need to file with the same name on record with SSA. I have not personally encountered any situations where the names differed, and I do often ask if the name on tax return matches SSA (especially if newly married).

Sounds like clients like this need to file with the same name on record with SSA.

Yup, I will be addressing that in my 2020 organizer.

I suspect it won't make a difference however, because clients will naturally choose the path of least resistance, just assume what's on file with the SSA is what they go by, and not bother to check.

It's a minor issue. I have a handful of clients affected. I've started noting who is affected and will most likely just go straight to hand signing for these individual returns next year.

Thanks for commenting.

We use Right Signature as well, but the failure rate is significantly higher, roughly 1 in 6 fail to get to the verification questions. We find clients get upset and we started typing in the message box that failures often occur, don’t panic if it doesn’t work, just let us know and we’ll figure out an alternative.

Besides spouses, I have found doing college student returns for kids of clients almost always fail.

You're right MWEA. The process also failed for the college age son of a client, for whom I prepare a 1040.

We assumed it was because he doesn't have enough "history" out there yet and advised the hand signing route.

Forgot about that one...

Hopefully RightSignature's KBA improves...it seems DocuSign might be slightly more user friendly.

DocuSign's KBA is very simple. I tested it out, and a client showed me their own process, and it seemed simple. I have seen some KBAs where the questions CLEARLY were not part of my history, but they were convinced it pertained to me (not DocuSign--bank verification, mostly). I think some KBAs are just more difficult than others, or the source information is not exactly correct due to associating an individual with someone else (I've had issues where questions were presented to me that actually pertained to an uncle, but I knew the answers).