The US federal tax collection agency has already hampered several federal agencies with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team members, causing multiple lawsuits and access to personal taxpayer data. It is said that there is.
The New York Times and the Washington Post both reported early Monday that the Internal Revenue Service received a request for access to a classified system that includes sensitive personal financial records.
Requests reportedly being under review will give Doge officials “a wide access to tax agency systems, property and datasets (including tax returns).
One of these, the Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS), provides tax agency employees with the ability to view IRS accounts and bank information, the Washington Post reports.
“Wash, fraud and abuse have long been deeply entrenched in broken systems,” said White House spokesman Harrison Fields. “To identify and fix it, you can access the system directly.”
Fields said Musk’s controversial program “will continue to shed light on the scams they reveal, as Americans deserve to know what their government has spent their hard-earned taxes.” He added.
The Doge team member is reportedly Gavin Kliger, a software engineer who is a staff member of the Human Resources Administration, which manages US civil servants.
The New York Times said that one of the six young programmers 26-year-old Krigger, Musk’s chosen by hand, is working from IRS headquarters on Thursday, and will be assigned as Senior Advisor Doug O’Donnell, a proxy IRS Commissioner, to help him broadly. I reported that I gave it. Access to that system.
Kliger’s main focus in the IRS is to provide engineering assistance and IT modernization consulting, the demand for institutions states.
Previous efforts by DOGE members to access Treasury data have been pushed back. The 19-year-old state attorney general called to block the Trump administration’s policy of making political appointees and “special government officials” accessible to the department’s payment system.
Doge’s invasion of US tax collection agencies comes as government agencies prepare to fire thousands of workers hired by the previous Biden administration.
Last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent said last week he hopes to upgrade IRS technology. Bessent told Fox Business that they want to improve their collections, privacy and customer service.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in the country. They think the IRS has achieved that potential with one of these three,” he said.
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Doge-led sweep of federal agencies, including USAID and the Department of Education, faces time constraints. Musk and his team are 120 days before a federal government’s declaration of employment must be made.
According to the draft IRS memorandum obtained by the Post, Kliger will be working for the IRS during that period, but his employment could be renewed for the same period.
The memo said that Kliger should keep the information on his tax return confidential, keep it safe from unauthorized access, and delete it from his records after he finishes his term in the IRS.
According to a report from the Government’s Accountability Office, the government spent about $90 billion on information technology in 2019, most of which was spent operating and maintaining legacy systems that were vulnerable to hackers half a century ago. .
The IRS system is one of the oldest built using computer coding languages since the 1960s. So it’s largely in line with Doge team delegation and Doge team mandates to modernize and synchronize the system across departments.
