Cybersecurity Policy Report, DOGE’s ‘Hackathon’ of Taxpayer Data Warrants Investigation, Senators Tell Treasury IG, (Apr 11, 2025)
Plans to use taxpayer data at the Internal Revenue Service for immigration enforcement and other questionable uses should be investigated by the Treasury Department’s inspector general, according to 18 senators.
Citing “alarming reports about improper access to tax return information” at the IRS, the senators sent a letter to Heather Hill, Treasury’s acting inspector general–tax administration, requesting a probe into what the senators called a taxpayer data “hackathon” orchestrated by Elon Musk and the White House Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The DOGE team has proposed installing an application programming interface (API) that would enable taxpayer data to be widely shared among executive branch agencies to detect waste and fraud in federal benefits programs, the senators warned.
“This proposed ‘hackathon’ by Musk and third parties could result in the exporting of taxpayer data to private entities and compromise the privacy of millions of Americans,” they said.
“DOGE has also requested an ‘omnibus’ agreement with federal agencies that would allow a broad swath of federal officials to cross-reference benefits rolls with taxpayer data,” they said.
Already in place is a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Treasury Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to “weaponize the tax system against up to seven million people suspected of being undocumented immigrants,” they said.
The signing of that MoU led to the resignations of the acting IRS commissioner and chief privacy officer, raising questions “about whether they resigned to avoid being a party to a criminal conspiracy to violate tax privacy law,” the senators wrote.
“As you know, violations of the tax privacy rules are punishable by civil and criminal penalties, including up to five years in prison,” they told the IG.
Although the Internal Revenue Code “permits certain limited disclosures for active criminal investigations individually approved by high level officials,” the number of such disclosures was only 30,538 in 2023, raising doubts “about whether it would be possible for ICE to have a valid reason for obtaining information on up to seven million people,” they said.
“The risks created by these activities cannot be overstated. The data in IRS systems cannot necessarily be relied upon for non-tax purposes,” they added. “The data can be inaccurate because of identity theft, keypunch errors, obsolete address information, and a wide range of other reasons.”
The letter was signed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. He was joined by Sens. Cory Booker (D., N.J.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D., Nev.), Alex Padilla (D., Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.), Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii), Martin Heinrich (D., N.M.), Ed Markey (D., Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), Tammy Duckworth (D., Ill.), Ben Ray Luján (D., N.M.), Peter Welch (D., Vt.), and Andy Kim (D., N.J.).
News: FederalLegislation DataPrivacy