William Brangham:
That’s right, Amna.
For decades, the IRS encouraged undocumented immigrants to file their taxes, with the assurance that their data would be protected. But now this unprecedented agreement would give authorities who want to deport migrants access to personal records that include job information, home addresses and more.
It comes less than a week before Tax Day and after a tumultuous few months that also saw mass layoffs across the agency.
So, to help understand what this all could mean we are joined now by Natasha Sarin. She’s the president of the Budget Lab at Yale University.
Natasha, thank you so much for being here.
So immigration officials will now have access to this personal data of migrants who are living in this country and filing their taxes. And when news of this broke, the head of the IRS, Melanie Krause, quit. How unusual is this agreement and this quitting?
Natasha Sarin, President, Budget Lab at Yale University: So, to put the sort of quitting in some context, we are now at a state where the IRS has gone through three commissioners in one filing season.
I — in modern history, there has been nothing like it or nothing even close to it, frankly. And the fact that Melanie Krause chose to resign is really pretty indicative of things being quite awry at the IRS, because Melanie, in terms of public reporting, at least is what we have seen, has been someone who, from the agency’s perspective, has been incredibly keen to work with the administration, to work with DOGE on their efforts with respect to work force reductions and data-sharing agreements.
And so for her to be of the view, that at this moment, one week before Tax Day, it is no longer tenable for her to be at the helm of this agency, I think tells you a lot about how dire circumstances really are there.
And with respect to the nature of this data-sharing agreement, there has really been nothing like it in the history of the IRS, and for very good reason. As you mentioned, the agency has historically made clear to undocumented immigrants and to their employers that they should feel secure from a privacy perspective in complying with their tax obligations paying into the IRS $66 billion in federal taxes each year, because their data won’t be weaponized or used for law enforcement in this manner.
And now, after sort of building up that trust with this population and being in a state where people really had faith that their data would be secure and protected and not used for any other purpose other than tax administration, except in incredibly rare circumstances, you’re in a situation where this type of data-sharing is going to occur going forward.
And we think that’s going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of the next decade.
