Report: IRS Chief Ousted for Refusal to Provide Taxpayer Data on Suspected Illegal Aliens
“The Trump administration is working in lockstep to eliminate information silos and to prevent illegal aliens from taking advantage of benefits meant for hardworking American taxpayers.”
Politicos were stunned to hear that IRS Commissioner Billy Long had been fired after being on the job for just two months. It was soon reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had been appointed acting IRS commissioner, and that Long had accepted President Donald Trump’s offer to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Iceland.
Sources told The Washington Post that Long was ousted over his refusal to hand over taxpayer data on suspected illegal aliens. On Saturday, the Post reported:
The Department of Homeland Security sent the IRS a list Thursday of 40,000 names of people DHS officials thought were in the country illegally and asked the IRS to use confidential taxpayer data to verify their addresses, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The Treasury Department, the parent agency of the IRS, and DHS agreed to an arrangement in April to facilitate such data sharing — over the objections of the tax service’s privacy lawyers.
DHS officials have suggested they would eventually ask the IRS for help locating 7 million people.
According to the sources, the IRS informed DHS that “it was able to verify fewer than 3 percent of the names” on the list.
The names the agency could match were mainly the individuals for whom DHS provided an individual taxpayer identification number. An ITIN is an IRS-specific ID that immigrants often use in place of a Social Security number on a tax filing. Undocumented immigrants pay tens of billions of dollars in taxes each year, which the ITINs help facilitate.
Further, the sources alleged that the White House wanted to know if any of those taxpayers had “claimed the earned income tax credit.” The IRS refused to provide that information.
The sources claimed that Long had previously informed colleagues that he would not provide confidential taxpayer data except as allowed under the IRS’s April agreement with DHS.
After the Post published this story, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson issued a statement which read, “The Trump administration is working in lockstep to eliminate information silos and to prevent illegal aliens from taking advantage of benefits meant for hardworking American taxpayers. … Any absurd assertion other than everyone being aligned on the mission is simply false and totally fake news.”
DHS released a statement:
[The agreement with the IRS] outlines a process to ensure that sensitive taxpayer information is protected, while allowing law enforcement to effectively pursue criminal violations.
After four years of Joe Biden flooding the nation with illegal aliens, these processes streamline pursuit of violent criminals, scrub these individuals from voter rolls, identify what public benefits these aliens are using at taxpayer expense, all while protecting American citizens’ safety and data.
I’m surprised Trump nominated Long for the position without resolving these details beforehand. Perhaps, given his six-term record as a dependable conservative in Congress, Trump felt it was unnecessary. Or maybe Long faced opposition from other top IRS officials.
The legacy media is making hay out of the fact that Long was the sixth person to lead the IRS this year. Danny Werfel, a Biden appointee, was fired as Commissioner after Trump took office. The acting commissioner who replaced him, alarmed by DOGE’s efforts to streamline the IRS and cut out the fraud, waste, and abuse, resigned. The next left after the IRS signed onto the data-sharing arrangement with DHS in April. Another lasted for two days due to “an internal conflict between Musk and Bessent.” His interim replacement stepped aside once Long was confirmed by the Senate.
Once again, permanent Washington is doing what it does best — standing in the way of what’s best for America. The Trump administration is working to deport those who entered the country illegally, yet the very bureaucrats who looked the other way during the Biden administration’s blatant refusal to enforce immigration law are now weaponizing every technicality to stop him. This episode is a textbook case of the swamp protecting itself, and it shows why purging these entrenched operatives from the federal payroll isn’t just necessary—it’s long overdue.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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“The legacy media is making hay out of the fact that Long was the sixth person to lead the IRS this year.”
Place your bets on first to the finish line:
“Abolish The ATF” or “Abolish The IRS”?
As an textualist, I’d say you’d need to repeal the 16th to get rid of the IRS, but you’d need to repeal the 2nd to keep the ATF… if anyone actually followed the constitution that is.
Neither assertion is necessarily true.
Start with the ATFE The 2nd amendment bans any infringement of the RKBA, but not all regulations do infringe it. Even if our laws fully respected the 2A, there might still be some regulations that would need to be enforced by some unit of the fedgov. I’m not sure that it would make sense to pair that unit with those enforcing whatever regulations we still had on alcohol and tobacco, but explosives seems close enough that they’d probably remain together.
Now to the IRS. It does not depend in any way on the 16A. The taxing power is right there in the first of the enumerated powers, and the USA has had taxes since 1789. Some agency has to collect them.
Further, repealing the 16A would not get rid of the income tax on earned income, which is what most people pay. At most it would get rid of income tax on income derived directly from property, e.g. rent and interest. The reason the 16th exists is because of a supreme court decision that the term “direct tax” in the constitution refers to a tax on something for merely existing, and that taxing rent and interest is such a tax and therefore must be apportioned among the states in some manner that no one really understands. However taxing activities, e.g. work, and the income derived from activities, has never been challenged, the 16th was not needed for such taxes, and repealing it would not eliminate them.
In addition, that understanding of the term “direct tax” seems to have fallen out of favor, so it’s likely that repealing the 16A would have no effect on any tax.
In any event, so long as there are federal taxes there will need to be an IRS. However in principle we could repeal all taxes, and thus the IRS, but keep the 16A authorizing but not requiring a tax on unearned income.
“I’m not sure that it would make sense to pair that unit with those enforcing whatever regulations we still had on alcohol and tobacco, but explosives seems close enough that they’d probably remain together.”
First off, reversing cause and effect — BATF got explosives only because they already had guns.
Second, inasmuch as explosives are arms, they shouldn’t be restricted any more than guns should be restricted…. and inasmuch as they are construction and farming equipment, they shouldn’t be regulated federally at all. Such things are regulated on the state/county level by adopting best-practices recommendations of private safety groups such as the NFPA.
Third, BATF got guns in the first place only because (at the time) they were a Treasury-based taxing agency, and gun control was ushered in under the wink-wink pretext of the taxing power. BATF was never meant to be a law enforcement agency — thank you, Witless George.
Negative. The 16th Amendment “gave the Congress no new powers of taxation” (Stanton v Baltic Mining Co.), meaning the authority of government was the same after the amendment’s ratification as it was before. Now, it may be necessary to abolish the income tax before abolishing the IRS (because abolishing internal taxes would put them out of business, but if the IRS was abolished without first abolishing internal taxes, another agency would have to do the same work, nothing would be gained by assigning the same work to another agency) but it would not be necessary to repeal the 16th Amendment. The amendment did nothing more than refute an argument (“The income tax appears to be a direct tax, and therefore must be apportioned.”) that had been successfully used (in Pollock v Farmers Loan & Trust) against an earlier income tax, preventing the same argument from being successful in the future. The fact that there were income taxes before the 16th Amendment (and the amendment wasn’t necessary to authorize them) demonstrates that an IRS could have likewise existed earlier, because internal taxation (as opposed to tariffs on imports) had existed before the amendment’s ratification.
For what it is worth: Long’s highest academic achievement was graduating from the Missouri College of Auctioneering.
Yet that seems eerily qualifying.
There are ways to provide greater integration of the data required to verify access to public programs and still protect the totality of individual data.
I find it remarkable that when “the White House wanted to know if any of those taxpayers had “claimed the earned income tax credit.”, [t]he IRS refused to provide that information.” From a public policy stance, one should be able to know if non-citizens are applying for and receiving EIC tax credits. I suspect that most Americans would not look kindly on that largess going to non-citizens, legal or otherwise.
But “IRS lawyers” pushed back.
I bet they’re sleeping with federal judges.
Section 6103 imposes some stringent requirements on disclosures. Generally, a request to assist with deportation would not be an enumerated item (unless part of a criminal investigation).
The info requested could, however, be disclosed to President Trump (individually, as opposed to the White House). There is a specific exception for Presidential disclosure. Fun fact: Obama invoked this provision hundreds of times to find out tax information on political opponents. How was that used? We never know. We do know that he met with the IRS hundreds of times (it’s logged), but the disclosures were logged, but per statute, the logs were destroyed at the end of his term.
US title 26 Section 6103(i) Disclosure to Federal officers or employees for administration of Federal laws not relating to tax administration
(1) Disclosure of returns and return information for use in criminal investigations
(A) In general. Except as provided in paragraph (6), any return or return information with respect to any specified taxable period or periods shall, pursuant to and upon the grant of an ex parte order by a Federal district court judge or magistrate judge under subparagraph (B), be open (but only to the extent necessary as provided in such order) to inspection by, or disclosure to, officers and employees of any Federal agency who are personally and directly engaged in –
(i) preparation for any judicial or administrative proceeding pertaining to the enforcement of a specifically designated Federal criminal statute (not involving tax administration) to which the United States or such agency is or may be a party, or pertaining to the case of a missing or exploited child,
(ii) any investigation which may result in such a proceeding, or
(iii) any Federal grand jury proceeding pertaining to enforcement of such a criminal statute to which the United States or such agency is or may be a party, or to such a case of a missing or exploited child,
solely for the use of such officers and employees in such preparation, investigation, or grand jury proceeding.
I am a cpa with a concentration in federal and state taxation.
The term illegal alien and legal alien are statutory definitions for immigration purposes.
The term resident alien and non resident alien are statutory definitions for federal income tax purposes.
Illegal alien and legal alien as defined for immigration purposes are resident aliens for federal income tax purposes. A resident alien (with limited exceptions ) are taxed the same as US citizens based on title 26 (internal revenue code). As such, resident aliens, including illegal aliens are entitled to the earned income credit. Whether they should be from a policy standpoint is a different issue.
Since many illegal aliens lack social security numbers, there is a large black labor market with much of the income unreported.
But it was ok to leak the Trump tax returns…
The reality is the guy who did that, Charles Edward Littlejohn (who I believe was an IRS contractor), got the book thrown at him. The government asked for the longest sentence possible and the judge (one of the most liberal on the federal bench) surprisingly gave it to him, 5-years in prison, 3-years of additional supervised release and a $5K fine, all the max allowable by statute. That’s the longest sentence I can ever remember being handed down to someone who’s leaked non-classified (but protected) information to the media. The IRS claims that it was the first leak of its kind in US history. The statutory penalty should be increased IMO, something Congress can still remedy.
Keep in mind that the FBI Lawyer who fabricated evidence to obtain the warrant to surveille Carter Page (and Trump) was only sentenced to probation, given no fine and never even lost his license after knowingly presenting false evidence to the tribunal.
“The IRS claims that it was the first leak of its kind in US history.”
Now I’m dithering as to whether that counts as a rare Republican First, or just one more overheated Democrat First,.
Littlejohn received a longer than usual sentence for the disclosure, but was only charged and plead guilty to a single count.
Per the IRS, he didn’t just disclose one tax return, or even two tax returns. He accessed and disclosed hundreds of thousands of returns. Aside from whatever privacy concerns one might have, that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of letters from the IRS indicating information was disclosed, and in many cases, the recipients have had to deal with figuring out what notices they needed to provide to their employees, account holders, and investors. The third party costs of this have to be in the tens of millions, if not more. If there ever was a case that deserved a harsh punishment, this was it.
The people in the IRS arguing about this protections for illegals have no problem going after innocent Americans and railroading them on their taxes. That to me shows that it their priorities.
Sounds like the root core of the issue is that Commissioner Long didn’t clean out the stables at HQ. That came back to bite him.
Agreed. There’s an entire incestuous ecosystem in DC of globalists determined to resist upsetting their apple cart. They want open borders b/c they believe the idea of a Nation State is passed its prime. The faux libertarian, naked capitalists want open borders to import cheap labor to artificially depress wages. Both groups share the goal of increasing their own power and wealth at the expense of the broad middle-class.
Every illegal alien should live in fear of every interaction with gov’t leading to their discovery, arrest, detention and deportation. Any Federal employee who ‘resists’ the ID of illegal aliens in their databases must be transferred to some make work interagency TF in the Arctic Circle pending termination or they can decline and be fired immediately.
Eh, there is some real danger in this framework that you described. Remember, most federal agencies do not have a field for “immigrant”, “illegal alien”, “green card”, or other LPR category. It’s not relevant to their jobs. So if the FBI reaches out to HUD, for example, and says “give me all the addresses of your illegal aliens” HUD has nothing to give them.
So in this “you must tell us everything about illegal aliens” plan, it would have to work where Agency A makes a request to Agency B saying “give me all of your data on illegal alien Juan Doe”. And Agency B would have to provide it. The problem is that the gov’t is a really large organization and any bad actor can easily slip in a cross agency request for partisan purposes. It was bad enough when an IRS employee leaked Trump’s tax return. Now imagine 50 gov’t agencies with the power to tell the IRS to hand out any conservative’s tax return under the guise of hunting illegal aliens.
This kind of data is protected for a reason. It’s not simple and it has unfortunately come at the expense of hard lessons.
First off immigrants (legal and illegal) are bared by Federal Statutes in existence for almost 150 years from becoming a ‘public charge’. Unfortunately the application of the statute varies from Presidential admin to Presidential admin. Biden revoked the changes Trump made and now this Trump admin is modifying the Biden era changes.
In your example illegal immigrants don’t normally qualify for HUD. They are specifically bared from being granted housing assistance including rental assistance/Section 8 assistance under section 214 of the Housing and Community Development Act. Each member of the household receiving ‘assistance’ (aka living there) must have a SSA # with the exception of elderly other residents and children under age 6. Only lawfully admitted aliens qualify for HUD and most other Federal assistance.
I ain’t arguing (neither is the Trump admin) for a ‘tell us everything about every illegal alien’ policy. It should be granted on an individual basis for investigatory purposes. That said HUD itself should be investigating the grant of assistance to ensure continued compliance with eligibility criteria.
Sucks to be subject to potential data breach and unauthorized disclosure. No database is safe from eventual disclosure, not gov’t and not commercial. If that’s the objection then the only way to prevent disclosure is by not giving your information up to the gov’t in applying for the benefit.
Every illegal alien should be ready to be found, ID, arrested, sent to a detention facility awaiting deportation EVERY time they encounter any entity that receives Federal Funds. IMO that should include registration of/picking up/going to their child’s school, an ER visit, the Post Office, any ‘welfare’ office, all the way down to the library and dog catcher…not just ICE or Federal LEO. They can avoid it by taking the $1K +a free Plane ticket back home graciously offered by the Trump Admin to self deport.
Every employer and every govt benefits office that unlawfully employed or unlawfully approved govt benefits …of one I isn’t dotted, one T not crossed, put their asses in Prison. End the tolerance for turning a blind eye, accepting sob stories and making excuses. Restore accountability and severe consequences for malfeasance.
The fired chief was correct. The IRS can’t release data to other agencies because it has to avoid requiring self-incrimination when taxes are filed. That was the compromise making required returns constitutional.
If your returns can be used against you in criminal matters, you can’t be required to file income taxes.
“…because it has to avoid requiring self-incrimination when taxes are filed.”
As the IRS loves to remind people, the reporting of income is voluntary. Therefore there is no consideration of “self incrimination” related to any data submitted to the IRS. As the “Miranda warning” states, anything you say can and will be used against you. This applies to income tax filings in spades because it’s all voluntary.
Yes, it makes no sense because the IRS will prosecute people for “willful failure to file”. It is necessary for the IRS to claim that filing is voluntary because to claim otherwise would prevent the IRS from using the information you were REQUIRED to submit against you. (This is where self-incrimination would come in, but the IRS’ official position is that you do not self-incriminate when filing a tax return because you do so voluntarily.) The IRS literally must maintain that filing and self-assessment are voluntary, or it would not be able to use the filings in prosecutions.
It’s more complex than I’ve indicated here, but these are the basic facts.
“An ITIN is an IRS-specific ID that immigrants often use in place of a Social Security number on a tax filing.”
Evidently the law or policy has changed. Form W-7, “Application for IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Number” used to explicitly state that an ITIN number could not be used in place of a social security number. You could not use an ITIN number to report wage income. The ITIN was designed for students or others to report non-wage income such as interest on a banking account, honorariums etc. To work and collect wage income you needed a green card or equivalent.
Note it says on the current form W-7: “I authorize the IRS to share information with my acceptance agent in order to perfect this Form W-7, An illegal alien who does not file a tax return is guilty of the crime of tax evasion, a criminal offense.
Oden:
That’s not actually what it says. From the current IRS Form W-7 (a .pdf accessed now a couple of minutes ago), just above the signature line:
“Under penalties of perjury, I (applicant/delegate/acceptance agent) declare that I have examined this application, including accompanying documentation and statements, and to the best of my knowledge and belief, it is true, correct, and complete. I authorize the IRS to share
information with my acceptance agent in order to perfect this Form W-7, Application for IRS Individual Taxpayer Identification Number.”
So it is apparently only sharable with an “acceptance agent”, whatever the heck that is.
from Chat GPT
What an Acceptance Agent Does – They review the taxpayer’s documentation (like passports, visas, birth certificates), make sure the IRS Form W-7 is filled out correctly, and either forward the original documents to the IRS or certify copies so you don’t have to mail originals.
Basically they help non citizens, I guess legal or otherwise, fill out the forms required by the IRS.
That changed a while ago. Now an ITIN is the primary way for illegal aliens to file taxes. The IRS/FED doesn’t care if you’re an illegal alien or if you earn your income running guns and drugs as long as you pony up “your fair share” to the government. They don’t want anything that might possibly stop that flow of money keep people who are here illegally or engaging in illegal activities to stop people from filing.
as stated before
unlike his predecessors, djt hires AND FIRES when / if the hire becomes
derelict of duty
the lefty and rinos promote the troubled ones,, while djt says bye -bye
maga for the win!!
Glad he learned how to say “you’re fired” this term. Last term he apparently had forgotten how.
Define Long’s “duty” please.
The Democrat law team got hold of him. They did a “Sessions Swarm Attack”. Trump remembers the consequence of not clearing the deck and shooting the traitors now.
Billy Long should consider himself lucky he’s going to Iceland: Trump seriously thought about sending him to Siberia instead.
Once again, permanent Washington is doing what it does best — standing in the way of what’s best for America.
Hmmmm, that sounds like a rather lawless approach. How about, instead, asking the question whether Trump is asking them to actually break the law (as written)?
Sorry, but I think a legal blog should be more concerned with the nuances of the law as it pertains to this issue. Maybe an article that actually addressed whether Long was right or not would be helpful. This article didn’t do that. Dude is supposedly a staunch conservative.
BTW, commenters are discussing the item at issue. Thanks.
If DHS asks the IRS is John Smith claiming X credit and under what SSN/ITIN and at what address and for how many dependents for what tax years…. I fail to see the problem with IRS supplying that info for investigatory purposes. Simply giving DHS/ICE the entire database of taxpayer returns for them to root around in is not the issue here and I’d oppose that on policy grounds.
I suspect it’s a did-you-meet-the-requirements-for-cooperation issue. joe-dallas above quoted some of the regulations on when data sharing is appropriate. Without a subpoena for a specific individual’s data, the IRS may be prohibited from sharing it. “Give the data on these 10,000 names because I’m trying to track them down” may not be sufficient.
Put it this way: Do you think the NSA should provide DOJ with the full email history of a group of people without a warrant? Without multiple warrants?
Ha! How about we focus on illegal immigrants unlawfully applying for and receiving Federal benefits for which they are not entitled by law? Then we can move on to the NSA and IC sharing data with LEO (news flash they do, there’s plenty of workarounds on the prohibitions).
Not sure if you really understand how much of the current Federal ‘largesse’ in handing out ‘benefits’ is done via the tax code. That’s where the real $ is if we’re counting how much goes out the door. In particular the refundable credits have become a huge outlay. EITC up to $8,000, the Child tax credit up to $1,700, American opportunity tax credit up to $1K, the Child and dependent care credit up to $8K. …all amounts refundable.
Requesting basic data on an individual basis for a valid investigation doesn’t seem objectionable. They already agreed to do that. I’d be opposed to simply granting non individualized info requests and I’d also be in favor of life sentences for anyone abusing their data access to release data for nefarious purposes.
The rules about sharing gov’t data don’t change just because there’s a lot of money involved. I agree it’s a crisis. That is irrelevant.
Regardless of whether or not it is “basic data” there are procedures in place for sharing that data outside of the IRS. A spreadsheet with 10K entries and a request for transfer saying “Gimmie, it’s for a legit purpose” is probably not sufficient. My guess is that it requires either an existing agreement between the agencies signed by both directors, or a court order.
It’s the federal government. Things are never simple. Even obvious things.
Curious– how does someone get an ITIN while remaining undocumented?
You can’t prosecute someone for not filing a tax return unless you give them a way to file a tax return. This is the way.