IRS Watchdog’s Disturbing Report Details Who Had Access to Sensitive Systems

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A new IRS inspector general report said the nation’s tax collection agency continued to give 19 contractors access to sensitive systems despite having background reports that were returned as “not favorable.”

Despite having the unfavorable rating returned as recently as July 13, “These contractors still retained their access to one or more sensitive systems because the IRS did not take action to suspend or disable the contractors from the IRS’s systems, as required,” according to a report issued this week by the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration.

IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel — who took over the agency last April — told The Associated Press that four of the contractors have since been terminated and the others have resubmitted their paperwork and received favorable background checks, adding that “there’s no implicit implication of any kind,” he said, “that these 19 contractors compromised taxpayer information in any way.”

An IRS spokesperson said due to privacy issues they could not provide specific dates for when the issues were flagged, but said they were “promptly resolved” when identified by TIGTA.

The report comes as access to sensitive taxpayer information has sparked calls for investigations — and calls for reform on taxes for the wealthy.

Last week, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn of Washington, D.C., was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking tax information about former President Donald Trump and thousands of the country’s wealthiest people to news outlets.

Littlejohn, 38, gave data to The New York Times and ProPublica between 2018 and 2020 in leaks that appeared to be “unparalleled in the IRS’s history,” prosecutors said.

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