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What’s New
The IRS is considering weakening consumer privacy rules by allowing tax preparers like H&R Block or your accountant to share the entire contents of your tax filings with corporations that want to market products or services to you. U.S. PIRG is urging the IRS to reject these rules, and testified before the IRS on April 4th to advocate for better privacy protections. More.
How You Can Help
Ask your senators to support legislation, S.2484, to prohibit tax preparers from disclosing taxpayer information to other companies.
Brief Summary
Your tax returns contain extremely sensitive, personal financial information most Americans wouldn’t want the world to see, such as your income, how much you claim in medical expenses, how much you spend on child care and, of course, your contact information. Up until now, you could trust that your tax returns would remain private, and only you, your accountant and the IRS had access to them.
But now the IRS has proposed shocking new rules that would allow your tax preparer to share or sell the contents of your tax returns with a third party, as long as you sign a form giving them permission.
Since U.S. PIRG and other consumer groups began publicizing the IRS proposal in early March, a firestorm of opposition to the sale of tax returns has surfaced nationwide. Senator Barack Obama (IL) introduced legislation in April, S 2484, the Protecting Taxpayer Privacy Act, to stop the IRS from allowing tax returns to be shared with third parties. We also seek to roll back the IRS rule that already allows tax preparers to share information with their own affiliated companies, but the Obama bill is a very good start. Several other positive bills have been introduced as well.
Resources
U.S. PIRG testimony, April 2006
