Overview
- The acknowledgment came in a sworn filing by IRS Chief Risk and Control Officer Dottie Romo confirming that confidential return information for thousands was wrongly disclosed.
- ICE submitted roughly 1.28 million names for verification; the IRS matched about 47,000 and, for under 5% of those, supplied additional address details later deemed improper when ICE address fields were incomplete.
- Treasury notified DHS on Jan. 23 and asked for remediation, including appropriate disposal of data shared based on insufficient address information, while the IRS has not said whether affected taxpayers will be notified.
- DHS and ICE told the court they will not inspect, use, or act on any return information from the program during ongoing litigation, even as a DHS spokesperson defended interagency sharing as necessary for public-safety objectives.
- Public Citizen’s suit and other challenges led to court orders, including a Massachusetts ruling halting residential address sharing and a prior order blocking the agreement, after which top IRS officials, including acting Commissioner Melanie Krause, resigned and experts warned of possible civil and criminal penalties.