I.R.S. Tracked Political Affiliations of Taxpayers
The outrageous privacy actions of our Government continue to come to light.
The News Tribune reports that the I.R.S. tracked the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.
As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an “outrageous violation of the public trust†that could undermine the agency’s credibility.
...Murray said she learned about the problem from the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelly. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department.
An I.R.S. spokesperson acknowledges that one of its "vendors" did collect the information and that it is illegal. It says it has never used the information and since told the vendor to "screen the information out." (It seems that a vendor is a private collection agency.)
But a Deputy IRS Commissioner defended the practice and said it is lawful.
In a letter to Kelly, Deputy IRS Commissioner John Dalrymple said the party identification information was automatically collected through a “database platform†supplied by an outside contractor that targeted voter registration rolls among other things as it searched for people who aren’t paying their taxes. “This information is appropriately used to locate information on taxpayers whose accounts are delinquent,†he said.
If you have received a tax collection call from a collection agency and you live in one of these states, you may be a person aggrieved.
According to Murray’s office, the 20 states in which the IRS collected party affiliation information were Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.
[hat tip Patriot Daily.]
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