IRS: Data Leak Affected Many More Taxpayers Than Previously Said

The IRS building in Washington on March 25, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Information on more than 400,000 taxpayers was leaked by an IRS contractor, the tax agency said in a newly disclosed letter.

Acting IRS Commissioner Douglas W. O'Donnell wrote in the letter dated Feb. 14 and released to the public on Feb. 25 that Charles Littlejohn “inappropriately disclosed” information on 405,427 taxpayers.

O'Donnell said the number came from a data analysis conducted by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and the IRS.

The IRS previously pegged the number of people whose information was exposed at more than 70,000.

The agency did not respond to a request for comment.

“The IRS’s admission confirms the Committee’s suspicion and recent reports that show the scope of the leak was much broader than what the Biden Administration’s IRS initially led the public to believe,” Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee said on the social media platform X.

O'Donnell sent the letter to the committee’s chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and the panel released it about 10 days later.

Littlejohn was working for an IRS contractor in 2019 and 2020 when he illegally disclosed thousands of federal tax returns and other financial information to news agencies, including then-President Donald Trump’s information, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Littlejohn pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful disclosure of tax returns and return information.

A judge in 2024 sentenced Littlejohn to five years in prison.

Littlejohn said at his sentencing hearing that he was solely responsible for what he did and that he acted out of a “sincere and misguided belief” that he was serving the “public interest” but “systematically [violated]” the privacy of thousands of people.

The IRS has said it was partly at fault for the crimes.

“The IRS takes its responsibilities seriously and acknowledges that it failed to prevent Mr. Littlejohn’s criminal conduct and unlawful disclosure of Mr. Griffin’s confidential data,” the agency said previously in a statement to Kenneth Griffin, one of the individuals whose information was disclosed.

The IRS has said it has improved its data security by targeting weaknesses identified by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration following the discovery of the illegal disclosures.

In the new letter, O'Donnell said the agency has mailed notifications to affected taxpayers. The Internal Revenue Code requires a taxpayer to be notified if a person is criminally charged with inspecting or disclosing the taxpayer’s returns or information on the returns.

“The IRS does not anticipate any further large mailings, though there will be a relatively small number of additional notifications based on ongoing research and reconciliation work,” he said.