The Biden administration’s IRS has again displayed incompetence by making private information about thousands of American taxpayers. The organization admitted on Friday that confidential information of 120,000 American taxpayers has been available for anyone to see on the IRS government website for about a year.
According to information from the NPR, the IRS confirmed that some data which should have been private were exposed through the website search engine.
The information made public was machine-readable data on specific 990-T forms. According to the law, 501(c)(3) organizations — non-profit groups like charities, trusts, and religious organizations — and non-501(c)(3)s are mandated to tender a yearly 990-T form. This is for unrelated business income relating to income that is not excluded from the income tax.
Moving on, the law mandates the IRS to make the 990-T forms for all 501(c)(3) public. On the other hand, the 990-T forms submitted by the non-501(c)(3)s are private and should remain that way, according to federal law.
However, the IRS failed in its simple duty to keep information private despite being heavily funded by the Biden administration. With the funds invested in the IRS, it is expected that they at least employ the services of the best in America.
However, the IRS supposedly has other uses for its funds as they noted that the private information was exposed due to a human coding error. Because of the IRS’s coding error, private information about 120,000 taxpayers was inadvertently publicized to the world.
In industry parlance, a coding error that slipped past QA. Their Change Management Process needs a serious audit #IRS https://t.co/6N6q6KtH9v
— Ajay Kaul (@ajaykaul10) September 7, 2022
This organization that could not handle such simple tasks is about to be given more power by the Biden administration and more authority to invade the lives and privacy of Americans. More so, Biden has enabled this set to carry around any weapon you can think of and even allowed them to use violence on civilians.
Though the IRS admitted that it failed to protect the privacy of 120,000 taxpayers, the IRS still went on to defend itself as it said it was no big deal. It insisted that the publicized information was not sensitive enough to compromise any of the taxpayers. Perhaps the IRS deserves an applause for that.
Simple operational errors can cause major damage.
And the IRS is a prime example as to why.
The IRS recently had a “human coding error” that accidentally exposed the confidential taxpayer data of 120,000 individuals on their website.
— Andrew DeJoy (@AndrewDejoy) September 7, 2022
A statement from the IRS said, “[T]he data does not include Social Security numbers, detailed account-holder information or individual income tax returns.”
The IRS further added that the responsible individual corrected the mistake immediately after it was noticed and reversed it. However, they forgot to add that it was a few months too late.
Pursuant to the law, the IRS is mandated to report any error that affects over 100,000 people to congress. IRS representative Anna Canfield Roth wrote a letter to Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the Committee of Homeland Security.
She wrote, “The agency removed the errant files from IRS.gov, and the IRS will replace them with updated files in next few weeks. The IRS also will be working with groups that routinely use the files to update remove the erroneous files and replace them with the correct versions as they become available.”