Breaking news’Five alarm warning’: Possible DOGE access to private taxpayer data sparks outcry

Breaking news’Five alarm warning’: Possible DOGE access to private taxpayer data sparks outcry

Elon Musk listens as President Donald Trump meets with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Oval Office of the White House, Feb. 13, 2025, in Washington

Democrats and tax experts are sounding alarms about a plan by Elon Musk’s DOGE team to gain access to an IRS system that contains detailed financial information about millions of taxpayers, including their tax returns.

“This is a five-alarm warning,” Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the IRS, said in a post on X, calling the move an “illegal and blatant power grab.”

Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, also took shots at the potential deal, which would come as people are in the midst of filing their taxes.

In a letter Monday to IRS Acting Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell
the lawmakers wrote that the proposal raises “serious concerns that Elon Musk and his associates are seeking to weaponize government databases containing private bank records and other confidential information to target American citizens and businesses as part of a political agenda.”

A White House official confirmed the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is seeking access to the sprawling IRS database, known as the Integrated Data Retrieval System. The move was first reported by the Washington Post.

A single person who is affiliated with DOGE and an IRS employee will be assigned to the effort, a White House official said.

The data is a closely guarded secret and unauthorized access to it is a felony. Some of Musk’s federal tax payment history, and also that of then-former President Donald Trump, was leaked several years ago.

An agreement DOGE is seeking with the IRS would require the person with access to keep tax return information confidential and destroy it later if it’s shared with him, the Post reported.

“I’m unaware of any instance of political appointees at Treasury or the IRS having access to this database,” Lily Batchelder, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for tax administration in the Biden administration, wrote on X. “I didn’t and the political appointees on my team did not.”

White House spokesperson Harrison Fields defended the effort.

“Waste, fraud, and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” he said. “It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.”

The IRS sometimes grants access to sensitive taxpayer information to people who aren’t agency employees, including contractors, consultants and other federal and state government agencies. They are subject to strict privacy rules that make unauthorized disclosures of people’s private information a felony.

The issue of who is privy to the data came under a microscope recently when an IRS contractor named Charles Littlejohn was caught leaking tax information about Trump and thousands of other wealthy people to the news media.

ProPublica reported in 2021 that Musk paid $455 million in federal taxes between 2014 and 2018, on reported income of $1.52 billion, based on leaked information.

Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison. Republicans were harshly critical of the IRS for not safeguarding the data and said Littlejohn should have been given a much stiffer prison sentence.

Wyden and Warren, in their letter to O’Donnell, questioned whether the DOGE team member would be legally qualified to access the data.

“To date, no information on DOGE employees or any others executing orders on Musk’s behalf have revealed any clear, stated purpose as to why they need access to return information, whether they have followed all required laws to gain access to IRS systems, and what steps the IRS has taken to ensure that inspection of tax return is contained to authorized personnel and not disclosed to any unauthorized parties,” they wrote.

The unprecedented request comes as tax professionals are already on edge about DOGE’s possible plans for the IRS in the midst of the current tax-filing season, which started last month, including layoffs.

“IRS service levels and modernization efforts have seen progress since the COVID-19 pandemic and we are committed to seeing those efforts continue,” Mark Koziel, the head of the American Institute of CPA’s said in a statement Sunday, before news of the DOGE effort broke.

“Americans deserve a fully functioning agency that can be respected by taxpayers and their preparers, thereby allowing them to comply with their tax obligations,” he said.