Congress Must Investigate Illegal Taxpayer Data Transfer from IRS to DHS

The IRS provided confidential taxpayer information to immigration enforcement officials even when DHS officials could not positively identify a specific individual. Federal law requires strict protections of the identities of taxpayers, protections that hold across governmental departments and agencies. Undocumented immigrants have paid taxes for years with assurances from the federal government that doing so would not result in them being targeted by immigration enforcement. But Treasury in April agreed to provide DHS with the names and addresses of individuals the Trump administration believed to be in the country illegally, pursuant to DHS requests, which has since been blocked by the federal courts. Before the agreement was struck down, DHS requested the addresses of 1.2 million people from the IRS. The agency responded with data on 47,000 individuals intentionally, and perhaps unintentionally also illegally shared confidential information for thousands of other taxpayers. Congress must investigate this breach of trust and confidentiality immediately and put protections in place to prevent it from happening again, and the individuals whose data was illegally shared must be informed and compensated if entitled. The IRS cannot be careless with our confidential information, even with our own government, and must face consequences.