IRS Not Fully Complying With ‘No TikTok on Government Devices’ Rule, Watchdog Finds

The download page for the TikTok app is displayed on an Apple iPhone on Aug. 7, 2020. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The IRS has failed to comply with a federal agency ban on TikTok, according to a recent report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

In February 2023, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued the “No TikTok on Government Devices” guidance for removing the video app from federal devices. Subsequently, the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) was modified to mandate that government contracts include a provision prohibiting the use of TikTok during the contract period.

However, the IRS didn’t comply, as contracting officers—those tasked with administering contracts on behalf of government agencies—didn’t include the TikTok ban requirements in several government contracts, according to the July 22 TIGTA report.

A review of 216 contract actions between June and August of 2023 found that 118 of them (55 percent) didn’t include such prohibitions.

IRS officials agreed that 98 out of the 118 contracts should have included the TikTok ban clause. They suggested that the clause wasn’t included because “it was either a timing issue of when the guidance became effective and when the contract was awarded, or it was more than likely due to an omission by the contracting officer.”

The tax agency’s management agreed to some of the TIGTA’s recommendations. Specifically, the IRS committed to reviewing the contracts and modifying them to ensure compliance with FAR’s TikTok prohibition.

In December, the TIGTA investigated the IRS and found that the agency didn’t update its “Bring Your Own Device” policies to comply with OMB guidance.

The agency failed to inform workers under the Bring Your Own Device program that the prohibition on TikTok applied to personal devices as well.

The IRS Criminal Investigation found that more than 2,800 mobile devices were using TikTok. In addition, about 900 IRS Criminal Investigation employees were allowed access to TikTok on their computers.

The TIGTA said the IRS planned to have the Bring Your Own Device program comply with OMB rules only by October this year. The delay in implementing the regulation suggested the IRS didn’t understand the “risk and expeditiousness with which agencies were required to ensure compliance with the No TikTok on Government Devices Act,” it stated.

IRS officials didn’t respond by publication time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

Threat of National Security

In January, Republican lawmakers had raised concerns about the IRS’s failure to implement the prohibition of TikTok.

The tax agency’s “lack of action with regard to implementation of the No TikTok on Government Devices Act has potentially compromised confidential taxpayer information located on devices that have TikTok, which has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and alarming data practices,” they wrote in a letter to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel.

“This is particularly troubling as the Chinese Communist Party continues to target American institutions, businesses, and citizens’ data,” they said.

While the OMB rules on TikTok are only applicable to government agencies, the Biden administration is pushing for a nationwide ban on the app.

In April, President Joe Biden signed the TikTok divest-or-ban bill into law, which passed the Senate with a vote of 79–18. The law gives ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, until Jan. 19, 2025, to sell the app, failing which it would be banned from web-hosting services and mobile app stores in the country.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) pointed out at the time that the Chinese Embassy lobbied against the bill. Such actions show “how dearly [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping is invested in this product—a product, by the way, [that] is not even allowed to operate in the Chinese domestic market itself.”

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew had vowed to fight the matter in the country.

“The facts and the Constitution are on our side, and we expect to prevail again,” he said.

The company eventually filed a lawsuit.

In May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit scheduled oral arguments in the case for September.