New Legal Briefs Filed in IRS Taxpayer Privacy Case Show Data Sharing Would Violate Separation of Powers and Harm Millions of Taxpayers
WASHINGTON, DC — Late last night, two amicus briefs filed in Centro de Trabajadores Unidos v. Bessent highlight broken promises to taxpayers from an unprecedented Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that would facilitate information sharing between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As the federal district court considers a motion for a preliminary injunction, the briefs ask the D.C. District Court to block the agreement, which could grant immigration enforcement access to the taxpayer information of as many as five million people.
One brief, filed by 105 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and led by Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), details the legislative history showing that use of tax information for immigration enforcement purposes has been debated in the U.S. Congress many times and rejected. Further, it notes that under the law, only Congress can create new exemptions to the general principles that all taxpayer information is confidential.
Last week, UnidosUS led a letter to the U.S. Congress from numerous public interest organizations, and today is sending an updated letter with a total of 279 signatories.
“Now that the government has collected data from millions of hard-working immigrant families by asserting they could trust the government to maintain their privacy, it is reprehensible for this MOU to attempt to reverse this policy. Only Congress has the power to change the law,” said Laura MacCleery, UnidosUS senior director of policy and advocacy.
“Taxpayer privacy is a cornerstone of our democracy and a principle Congress has protected for nearly 50 years. The IRS promised immigrant taxpayers their information would be kept confidential when they stepped up to follow the law. Breaking that promise not only violates the law — it jeopardizes the critical contributions millions of working families make to programs like Social Security and Medicare,” said Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) Chair and U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat.
“The Constitution gives the power to tax to Congress. The administration is trying to usurp that power by seeking to provide IRS information to ICE, even though Congress has considered and rejected what the administration is trying to do. If the administration gets its way, it could cause the loss of billions of dollars in tax revenue,” said Gerson Smoger of Smoger & Associates, P.C., lead author of the brief for the U.S. Congress.
The second brief was filed by the Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee (CEOC) and Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts, two organizations with years of experience providing tax services to immigrant communities, as accompanied by a declaration from Nina Olson, the former Taxpayer Advocate of the United States, who now leads the Taxpayer Rights Center.
“The MOU represents an abrupt shift in IRS approach to immigrant taxpayers, contrary to years of representation to those taxpayers about the privacy of their information vis-à-vis immigration enforcement agencies,” Olson said.
“The American people fought for and won privacy protections for every taxpayer, and that security makes it possible for millions of people, including immigrants, to contribute to their local communities’ safety and health. By attempting to gut our privacy protections, the administration is exposing everyone’s sensitive IRS data to abuses of power and further stripping away the resources we all need for health care that we can afford and schools that support our children’s success,” said Josh Rosenthal, workers’ rights program director at the Asian Law Caucus, which filed the brief from tax services organizations.
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