The IRS and Treasury Department blamed a human coding error that happened last year when Form 990-T began to be electronically filed. The nonpublic data was mistakenly included with the public data and all of it was available for searching and downloading on the agency’s website
An IRS research employee discovered the mistake in recent weeks, triggering a broader inquiry and leading to the removal of the data. As required under federal law governing major information-security incidents, the IRS notified Congress on Friday. Affected taxpayers will be notified in the coming weeks.
Last year, the news organization ProPublica published tax data about many of the wealthiest and highest-income Americans, triggering investigations. So far, it is unknown where that data came from.
The link for this post is using an archive of the article on The WSJ's website. An archive has no paywall, no subscription requirement, and can be easier to read. The original article, on The WSJ's website is:
Why people still believe that IRS is legit and real? IRS is a fucking joke, is fake!
https://money.cnn.com/2015/08/17/technology/irs-data-theft/index.html
history doesn't repeat but it often rhymes
The link for this post is using an archive of the article on The WSJ's website. An archive has no paywall, no subscription requirement, and can be easier to read. The original article, on The WSJ's website is:
IRS Says It Exposed Some Confidential Taxpayer Data on Website https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-says-it-exposed-some-confidential-taxpayer-data-on-website-11662145232
There's also another post, here on SN, sharing the WSJ article featured on MarketWatch:
IRS Says It Exposed Confidential Taxpayer Data for 120K Individuals on Website #66169 https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/irs-says-it-exposed-confidential-taxpayer-data-for-120k-individuals-on-website https://www.marketwatch.com/story/irs-says-it-exposed-some-confidential-taxpayer-data-on-website-11662148381