It was recently reported that a representative of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was stationed at IRS and seeking extraordinarily broad access to systems that include sensitive personal information including taxpayer identification numbers, addresses, bank account information, tax liability, and details on taxpayers’ transactions…. Granting access to this system to political appointees would be unprecedented: as IRS Commissioner John Koskinen highlighted, “as a general matter, political appointees never, as in never, have access to individual taxpayer files.” Former IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig has also noted that even IRS commissioners do not have access to the IRS systems that a DOGE affiliate sought access to.
It has since been reported that this representative will be given read-only access to a more limited set of “anonymized” tax data “in a manner that cannot be associated with, directly or indirectly, any taxpayer.” But this does not resolve concerns with DOGE having access to the systems. We still do not know precisely what data DOGE affiliates will be able to access and what guardrails, if any, will be in place to prevent misuse and improper disclosure of taxpayer data. It is simply unknown what level of access to taxpayer data DOGE may achieve, and for what purposes. DOGE or other political appointees may also continue to seek broader access to taxpayer information.
Importantly, we also have no detail on what it will mean for the data that DOGE affiliates can access to be “anonymized” and “in a manner that cannot be associated with, directly or indirectly, any taxpayer.” It could still contain return information that, while not containing names, could easily be traced back to identifiable taxpayers — especially if DOGE cross-references across data sets it has access to, including tax data it accesses through other agencies beyond the IRS. Transparency about the purpose of DOGE access is also necessary to determine whether all laws and rules are being followed.
[R]eporting suggests that a DOGE representative will receive “the same access granted to academic researchers and IT professionals who work on IRS systems,” but it is not clear whether DOGE access will also follow the stringent procedures that the IRS usually applies to any access to taxpayer data for research. External researchers seeking tax data must submit and receive approval for a proposal that details a specific and legitimate use for accessing the data. If approved, the IRS will provide a data set limited to what is necessary to do that specific project. Work involving the tax data is only done on IRS laptops and with an IRS email account that is subject to monitoring by the IRS. The research sometimes takes place within IRS facilities. It would be a major red flag if IRS data were taken off the IRS network where its use (or misuse or vulnerability to hacks from outside actors) cannot be traced.
Some reporting suggests that DOGE affiliates will sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the IRS regarding data access, but that MOU has not been released to the public as of this publication. Furthermore, an MOU does not make broad access a good idea. It also cannot make lawful access that is unauthorized under statutory protections.
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