US tax agency broke privacy law ‘approximately 42,695 times’, judge says

A federal judge has ruled that the Internal Revenue Service violated its code by giving a US immigration agency confidential taxpayer data.

A federal judge in the United States has ruled that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) broke the law by disclosing confidential taxpayer information “approximately 42,695 times” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In a decision issued on Thursday, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found that the IRS had erroneously shared the taxpayer information of thousands of people, in apparent violation of the Internal Revenue Code.

The ruling cited IRS Code 6103, one of the strictest confidentiality laws in federal statute, which largely prohibits the disclosure of tax return information without consent.

Kollar-Kotelly said that the IRS violated that law “approximately 42,695 times by disclosing last known taxpayer addresses to ICE”.

“The IRS not only failed to ensure that ICE’s request for confidential taxpayer address information met the statutory requirements, but this failure led the IRS to disclose confidential taxpayer addresses to ICE in situations where ICE’s request for that information was patently deficient,” she wrote.