Court Blocks IRS from Handing Private Taxpayer Information En Masse to ICE
WASHINGTON D.C. — In a major win for privacy, the D.C. Circuit today affirmed a preliminary injunction to prevent the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from sharing taxpayer information en masse with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Public Citizen filed a similar lawsuit last year, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos vs. Bessent.
Under federal law, the IRS is forbidden from sharing taxpayer data with other agencies unless the IRS adheres to strict procedural requirements. In today’s decision, the D.C. Circuit found that the IRS’s so-called Data-Exchange Procedure for sharing taxpayer information with ICE was in “direct violation” of those procedures because it permitted ICE to obtain taxpayer information even if ICE failed to furnish the IRS with the taxpayer’s address, the criminal investigator responsible for the investigation, or the relevance of the information to the investigation, all of which are required before the IRS may share taxpayer data.
“The D.C. Circuit correctly recognized that noncitizens have the same privacy rights in their tax returns that federal law extends to all taxpayers,” said Nandan Joshi, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group. “The Trump administration’s desire to hoover up personal information to support its immigration enforcement agenda does not justify its failure to follow the law.”