IRS, White House clashed over immigrants' data before tax chief was ousted

Washington Post

a day ago

The Internal Revenue Service clashed with the White House over using tax data to help locate suspected undocumented immigrants hours before Trump administration officials forced IRS Commissioner Billy Long from his post Friday, according to two people familiar with the situation.
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'd eventually ask the IRS for help locating 7 million people. There are about 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, according to federal estimates.
On Friday, though, the IRS responded that it was able to verify fewer than 3 percent of the names immigration enforcement officials submitted, the people said.
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.
White House officials requested additional information on the taxpayers the IRS identified, the people said — specifically, if any of them had claimed the earned income tax credit, which can reduce the tax bill for some low-income filers. The IRS declined to provide that information, citing taxpayer privacy rights.
Long had previously told agency executives that his agency would not furnish confidential taxpayer information outside of the confines of the IRS's agreement with DHS, the people said.
Still, the people did not know if tension over the IRS's role in President Donald Trump's mass deportation drive contributed to Long's departure from the IRS.
'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,' White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
A senior DHS official said in a statement that 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,' the official said, without providing a name.
Officials at Treasury, which the IRS is part of, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Long on Friday said Trump intended to nominate him as the U.S. ambassador to Iceland, removing him from his post at the IRS after less than two months in the job. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will serve as the interim IRS commissioner. Trump administration officials confirmed both moves.
Long jokingly posted on social media Friday that he'd called Trump and asked to join ICE, or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
'I guess he thought I said Iceland?' Long wrote. 'Oh well.'
Long had previously sparred with Treasury officials over plans to start tax filing season around Presidents' Day in February — about a month behind schedule — and also preemptively announced plans to eliminate the IRS's Direct File program, even though Treasury officials had not decided to do so, according to four people familiar with the events, who similarly spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Long, a former six-term Republican congressman from Missouri, was confirmed to the position in mid-June. Trump broke tradition by not allowing the former Biden-appointed IRS commissioner, Danny Werfel, to serve out his full five-year term.
He was the sixth IRS leader since the start of the year. One early acting commissioner left amid churn at the agency due to the administration's cost-cutting campaign led by Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service, while another left after the agency agreed the DHS data-sharing arrangement. A third acting commissioner was pushed out after only two days because of an internal conflict between Musk and Bessent.
Riley Beggin contributed to this report.