Latest news with #MelanieKrause
Boston Globe
12-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Judge refuses to block IRS from sharing tax data to identify and deport people illegally in US
The decision comes less than a month after former acting IRS commissioner Melanie Krause resigned over the deal allowing ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records. Advertisement The IRS has been in upheaval over Trump administration decisions to share taxpayer data. A previous acting commissioner announced his retirement earlier amid a furor over Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency gaining access to IRS taxpayer data. The Treasury Department says the agreement with ICE will help carry out President Donald Trump's agenda to secure U.S. borders and is part of his larger nationwide immigration crackdown, which has resulted in deportations, workplace raids and the use of an 18th century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants. The acting ICE director has said working with Treasury and other departments is 'strictly for the major criminal cases.' Advocates, however, say the IRS-DHS information-sharing agreement violates privacy laws and diminishes the privacy of all Americans. Advertisement
The Independent
12-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Judge refuses to block IRS from sharing tax data to identify and deport people illegally in U.S.
A federal judge on Monday refused to block the Internal Revenue Service from sharing immigrants' tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U.S. In a win for the Trump administration, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich denied a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed by nonprofit groups. They argued that undocumented immigrants who pay taxes are entitled to the same privacy protections as U.S. citizens and immigrants who are legally in the country. Friedrich, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, had previously refused to grant a temporary order in the case. The decision comes less than a month after former acting IRS commissioner Melanie Krause resigned over the deal allowing ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records. The IRS has been in upheaval over Trump administration decisions to share taxpayer data. A previous acting commissioner announced his retirement earlier amid a furor over Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency gaining access to IRS taxpayer data. The Treasury Department says the agreement with ICE will help carry out President Donald Trump's agenda to secure U.S. borders and is part of his larger nationwide immigration crackdown, which has resulted in deportations, workplace raids and the use of an 18th century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants. The acting ICE director has said working with Treasury and other departments is 'strictly for the major criminal cases.' Advocates, however, say the IRS-DHS information-sharing agreement violates privacy laws and diminishes the privacy of all Americans.
CBS News
15-04-2025
- Business
- CBS News
IRS could cut up to 40% of workforce, memo indicates
The IRS is planning to cut up to 40% of its workforce after Tuesday marked the official end of tax filing season, according to an internal memo obtained by CBS News that has circulated among IRS employees this week. The memo said that the IRS will send Reduction in Force (RIF) notices on a biweekly basis. The RIF plan also states the agency will go from 102,000 employees to its targeted "ending figures" of 60,000 to 70,000. News of the memo was first reported by the Federal News Network . There was a deadline of April 14 from the Office of Personnel Management for agencies to submit RIF plans for their approval. It is not known yet if the IRS's plan has been fully approved by the Treasury Department or OPM. April 15 marked the official deadline for most taxpayers to file taxes, though if a taxpayer is granted an extension , they have until Oct. 15 to file without penalty. According to the memo, the IRS will have two RIF phases, with an evaluation of the first phase to be conducted in August. In a list of "core functions" at the agency, the Office of Civil Rights, the Taxpayer Experience Office, the Transformation Strategy Office and the Online Services Office are designated to have a "high" level of cuts during phase one, according to the memo. In phase two, those offices are listed as "Consolidate." The memo also states that there will be a "high" level of cuts for "taxpayer services and compliance" employees during phase two. "Career executives" will also undergo another RIF in between the two phases, according to the memo. In response to the memo on the RIF plan, a Treasury spokesperson wrote that the reductions "currently being considered" at the IRS are "part of — and driven by — process improvements and technological innovations that will allow the IRS to collect revenue and serve taxpayers more effectively." "The roll back of wasteful Biden-era hiring surges, and consolidation of critical support functions are vital to improve both efficiency and quality of service. The Secretary is committed to ensuring that efficiency is realized while providing the collections, privacy, and customer service the American people deserve," the spokesperson added. The goal of the cutbacks could be helped by over 20,000 IRS employees who are expected to leave the agency through the IRS's own Deferred Resignation Program offer, known as DRP 2.0, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation. This was first reported by Bloomberg Tax . Acting commissioner Melanie Krause and other senior leaders have opted into that program , and could leave the agency as soon as April 28. When asked about the 20,000 leaving via the DRP 2.0, the Treasury spokesperson pointed to the Biden administration growing the IRS by over 22,000 employees through $80 billion in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act. "Under new leadership, approximately the same number of employees have left the IRS, with a vast majority leaving voluntarily through the Deferred Resignation Program," they said.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Editorial: Breaking the firewall — IRS data-sharing with immigration violates a promise, and the law
The Trump administration, in forcing the IRS to share its secret-by-law tax information with immigration enforcement authorities, is breaking with decades of precedent and almost certainly violating federal law. The IRS leadership, including Acting Commissioner Melanie Krause, is headed for the exits for such a lawless breach. There are a lot of things that differentiate the U.S. government from many more openly authoritarian ones around the world and one of them is that your info is protected. So the vast troves of data that the government collects for all manner of purposes and on everyone is siloed away only for the purposes it was intended for and can't just be picked over for any other agency at will for whatever purpose they want. Data has always been power, and that's especially so when the information can be gathered at scale from many sources, compiled and parsed with powerful tools that governments could once only have dreamed of, which can be used to monitor the population and punish dissent and opposition. So while the IRS violates the tax secrecy law, it also violates a core principle of U.S. democracy, in letting other parts of government root through the sensitive information of millions of people. Aside from these more high-minded issues, there are some acute and immediate practical impacts here, namely that undocumented immigrant-led households paid some $90 billion in local, state and federal taxes in 2023, including billions in Social Security and Medicare taxes that they are not themselves eligible to ever get back, making them an outsize revenue source for these crucial programs. These immigrants did so out of a variety of motivators, including establishing a record to potentially regularize their status later, in order to contribute to the common good and out of the sense that it would avoid making them targets for immigration enforcement. The rest of us got a windfall from their withholdings. But such widespread cooperation with the taxman was only because it was known by all that income and earnings info would not be used for immigration purposes. That was the assurances not only of accountants and immigration lawyers, but also government officials themselves, who promised that the IRS data was strictly walled off for tax purposes alone. Even if the administration insists that the only people who will be targeted are violent criminals, this is what they've said about every single one of their enforcement efforts so far. Yet these have decidedly not exclusively or even mostly targeted hardened criminals, as demonstrated by the saga of the family swept up in border czar Tom Homan's own hometown upstate, or that 90% of the men sent to a Salvadoran prison don't even have criminal records. Why would undocumented immigrants pay their taxes now that we've opened the door to that responsible action being used to put them in detention and remove them from the country? The MAGA crowd loves to wail about how immigrants don't pay taxes, which is false, but they're making it so with this short-sighted decision, just in time for Tax Day. Even if the policy never goes into effect, the damage has been done. It's a broken promise and a trust that will be very hard to rebuild. ___
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Editorial: Breaking the firewall — IRS data-sharing with immigration violates a promise, and the law
The Trump administration, in forcing the IRS to share its secret-by-law tax information with immigration enforcement authorities, is breaking with decades of precedent and almost certainly violating federal law. The IRS leadership, including Acting Commissioner Melanie Krause, is headed for the exits for such a lawless breach. There are a lot of things that differentiate the U.S. government from many more openly authoritarian ones around the world and one of them is that your info is protected. So the vast troves of data that the government collects for all manner of purposes and on everyone is siloed away only for the purposes it was intended for and can't just be picked over for any other agency at will for whatever purpose they want. Data has always been power, and that's especially so when the information can be gathered at scale from many sources, compiled and parsed with powerful tools that governments could once only have dreamed of, which can be used to monitor the population and punish dissent and opposition. So while the IRS violates the tax secrecy law, it also violates a core principle of U.S. democracy, in letting other parts of government root through the sensitive information of millions of people. Aside from these more high-minded issues, there are some acute and immediate practical impacts here, namely that undocumented immigrant-led households paid some $90 billion in local, state and federal taxes in 2023, including billions in Social Security and Medicare taxes that they are not themselves eligible to ever get back, making them an outsize revenue source for these crucial programs. These immigrants did so out of a variety of motivators, including establishing a record to potentially regularize their status later, in order to contribute to the common good and out of the sense that it would avoid making them targets for immigration enforcement. The rest of us got a windfall from their withholdings. But such widespread cooperation with the taxman was only because it was known by all that income and earnings info would not be used for immigration purposes. That was the assurances not only of accountants and immigration lawyers, but also government officials themselves, who promised that the IRS data was strictly walled off for tax purposes alone. Even if the administration insists that the only people who will be targeted are violent criminals, this is what they've said about every single one of their enforcement efforts so far. Yet these have decidedly not exclusively or even mostly targeted hardened criminals, as demonstrated by the saga of the family swept up in border czar Tom Homan's own hometown upstate, or that 90% of the men sent to a Salvadoran prison don't even have criminal records. Why would undocumented immigrants pay their taxes now that we've opened the door to that responsible action being used to put them in detention and remove them from the country? The MAGA crowd loves to wail about how immigrants don't pay taxes, which is false, but they're making it so with this short-sighted decision, just in time for Tax Day. Even if the policy never goes into effect, the damage has been done. It's a broken promise and a trust that will be very hard to rebuild. ___
