For the IRS, All-Powerful Isn’t Synonymous With Competent

The Biden administration has put its trust, and $80 billion, into the IRS to help defray the costs of an ever-expanding state.

Sure. But then we get stories like this:

The Internal Revenue Service mistakenly published confidential data for 120,000 taxpayers on its website before realizing the error and taking down the data, the Treasury Department said.

The IRS accidentally posted data from a tax form used by both individuals and tax-exempt organizations, the Treasury said in a letter to lawmakers on Friday. While information about nonprofit groups is routinely made public, that for individuals is supposed to be kept private. The Treasury said the IRS would contact all individuals affected in the coming weeks.

The disclosure didn't include Social Security numbers, income figures or information that could harm an individual's credit, the department said. Some published information included names and contact information.

Bad? You bet it's bad. Not quite to the level of IRS security breaches in 2015/2016, in which hackers made off with the personal information of hundreds of thousands of taxpayers.

And certainly not to the scale of the Office of Personnel Management data breach in which hackers stole the personal information of millions of government workers.

But bad in a different way – it was a “mistake.” Not hackers or espionage or other nefarious means. A “mistake” that may have taken days to correct.

Perhaps the IRS could take a few dollars from its new budget and put it towards training people not to make such mistakes in the future. And if that doesn't work, at least train someone to take the information offline immediately.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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