INVESTIGATINGGovernmentA federal judge ruled that the IRS illegally turned over confidential taxpayer information to ICE 42,695 times. Every single transfer violated federal law. The ruling was reported by Fortune but received minimal mainstream coverage.
“A federal judge ruled that the IRS illegally turned over confidential taxpayer information to ICE 42,695 times. Every single transfer violated federal law. The ruling was reported by Fortune but received minimal mainstream coverage.”
A federal judge ruled that the IRS violated federal law by handing over confidential taxpayer information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Not once. Not a hundred times. 42,695 times. Every single transfer was illegal. And almost nobody reported on it.
The judge's ruling was unambiguous: the IRS had no legal authority to share taxpayer information with ICE. Federal law explicitly prohibits the disclosure of tax return information for immigration enforcement purposes. The IRS did it anyway — 42,695 times.
42,695 illegal disclosures means this wasn't an accident, a glitch, or a rogue employee. This was a systematic program. The IRS built a pipeline to feed confidential tax information directly to immigration enforcement, in direct violation of federal statute.
Fortune reported on the ruling. A few outlets picked it up. But for a story about a federal agency illegally sharing the private financial information of nearly 43,000 people, the media response was almost nonexistent. Compare that to the coverage of any celebrity scandal and ask yourself what the media's actual priorities are.
If the IRS will illegally share your tax data with ICE, what else are they sharing? And with whom? The ruling exposed one pipeline. How many others exist that haven't been challenged in court?
No one's said anything yet. Be the first to drop your take.
