A federal appeals court has ruled that the Internal Revenue Service illegally shared confidential taxpayer information, including addresses, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This decision overturns a previous ruling by a lower court that had allowed the IRS to continue providing data to DHS for immigration enforcement purposes. The appeals court's decision states that the data sharing violated Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, which protects taxpayer privacy.
The appeals court found that the IRS's interpretation of exceptions to Section 6103 was too broad. The IRS had been sharing information, including addresses, for individuals subject to criminal investigations related to immigration enforcement. The court emphasized that the statute tightly restricts disclosure but allows certain exceptions for law enforcement, a point that had previously been affirmed by a DC Circuit ruling, which allowed the data sharing to continue while the case moved forward.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly previously found the IRS broke the law by disclosing taxpayer information approximately 42,695 times to ICE. This finding was based on a declaration from Dottie Romo, IRS's chief risk and control officer, which revealed the IRS provided DHS with information on 47,000 of the 1.28 million people ICE requested. In most of these cases (90.3% or 42,695 addresses), the IRS gave ICE additional address information without confirming ICE provided a valid address for the person, as required by privacy rules. This was primarily due to the "TIN Matching" process, which did not verify the provided address. The Center for Taxpayer Rights, which sued over the disclosures, highlighted the unprecedented nature of this scale of privacy violation, noting that it could lead to misidentification of taxpayers.
Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has criticized the data-sharing agreement, suggesting it could lead to errors and misidentification, potentially sending ICE after innocent individuals. He has called for the agreement to be revoked and warned those involved of potential criminal investigations and lawsuits. The stated goal of the operation was to track down non-citizens who had been ordered deported but were refusing to leave, with ICE requesting information including names, taxpayer numbers, deportation order dates, and addresses for 1.28 million individuals.
