Trust the IRS to compromise the security of your private data

by Ben Bullard / Personal Liberty Digest

 

 

When the IRS has to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests (don’t laugh; apparently they only stonewall some of the time), anything in the released documents that can be traced back to a private taxpayer is supposed to be redacted.

But, according to an audit from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, that doesn’t always happen.

A Treasury IG’s report on the IRS’ compliance with FOIA requests released in September found that the agency “may be inadvertently disclosing taxpayer information” by failing to redact tax ID numbers and banking information, among other data, that can be tied to individual taxpayers.

Here’s the relevant portion of the IG report:

Those disclosures releasing sensitive taxpayer information are summarized as follows with some requests having more than one issue.

Seven occurrences which released Personally Identifiable Information that was outside the scope of what the requestor’s Power of Attorney or designated representative was authorized to receive.

Six occurrences which released Personally Identifiable Information of third-party taxpayers.

Two occurrences which treated taxpayer-related information (such as revenue agent reports, bank records, etc.) inconsistently by redacting information on some pages, and then releasing it on others.

In addition to Personally Identifiable Information, there was one occurrence in which a taxpayer’s Discriminant Function Score was released to the requestor as well.  This numerical score is given to tax returns based upon a computerized classification process that by IRS policy is for “official use only.”  The IRM specifies that release of this information could impair tax administration and should not be disclosed.

Office of Disclosure officials stated that these inadvertent disclosures could have resulted from several contributing factors, such as:

An oversight by the caseworker when completing the review of responsive records.

An oversight by management in the review of the case files.

While the report characterizes these failures as inadvertent, the IRS has a recent history of lapses that appear to favor government over citizens. 

“The new audit comes on the heels of revelations the IRS has intentionally disclosed information about some high-profile taxpayers — directly to the White House,” Watchdog.org noted in a recent story. 

“Although the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration launched an investigation into how the White House got that information, the report was never made public.”