WASHINGTON - Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) today released the following statement after the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration opened an investigation into the leak of sensitive taxpayer information to USA Today. The newspaper published a story Wednesday that included the full unredacted contents of an IRS list of pending applications for tax-exempt status. The published list contained confidential taxpayer information and was included in the production of documents to Congress protected by 6103 authority, which makes it illegal to publicly disclose taxpayer information. The IRS also provided congressional committees a redacted version of the list - linked here - that blacked out almost all of the information because it was viewed as sensitive taxpayer information. For a full understanding of the 6103 rules and penalties, see the Joint Committee on Taxation analyses - JCS-1-00 Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - linked here.
LEVIN: “The release of confidential, sensitive taxpayer information must be prosecuted with the full force of the law and I expect the Treasury Inspector General to complete a thorough investigation of this leak. A leak of this magnitude under any circumstance is outrageous. This occurred as there continues to be a very disturbing effort by some to distort the facts for partisan political purposes."
