IRS faces scrutiny from Elon Musk and DOGE organization

On Feb. 13, Gavin Kliger visited the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the middle of tax season. Kliger is a 25-year-old former Databricks software engineer and is a top staffer under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

Kliger met with senior executives at the IRS in an effort to scrutinize the agency and its operations per President Trump’s request for DOGE to cut costs, waste and fraud throughout the federal government. 

According to an email seen by Reuters, “Separately, senior executives at the IRS were instructed on Thursday to identify all ‘non-essential’ contracts for termination.”

Government contracts are essentially an agreement between a business and the government to provide goods or services for payment. The General Services Administration (GSA) deems a contract non-essential if it “merely generates a report, research, coaching, or an artifact.” These standards for non-essential contracts were brought into play because of the Trump Administration. Businesses big and small operate under specific government contracts and if they are deemed non-essential, the business itself and thousands of jobs are at risk.

Information about non-essential contracts was not the only thing DOGE was seeking out. A source that spoke to the AP that requested anonymity reported that DOGE is specifically seeking access to the IRS’ Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS). This system gives anyone who accesses it “instantaneous visual access to certain taxpayer accounts,” according to the IRS website. The system can also be used for “researching account information and requesting returns,” and “automatically generating notices, collection documents and other outposts.” 

Simply, the IDRS is a giant search engine that gives certain IRS employees the capability to access every record that the agency has on file and every single database within the IRS. This includes, but is not limited to, private bank information, tax information and social security numbers. The only IRS employees allowed to access the IDRS are those working directly with taxpayers that may need past tax information, information about a balance owed, etc.

With DOGE and Musk putting the IRS under tight scrutiny and requesting access to the IDRS during tax season, private information is at risk, as well as the integrity of the IRS. Not only is DOGE operating blindly and offering up criticisms and opinions that won’t necessarily benefit the tax-collecting agency or the American people, they have pressed the IRS for permission to access individual tax history of every individual, household, nonprofit and business in the country.

This is an issue because most taxpayer information is highly confidential and illegal to access unless you have the correct credentials. DOGE demanding access to such a large magnitude of private information and, in such little time, lays the groundwork for the information to land into the wrong hands. DOGE can inadvertently access the information illegally as a special government entity, or they run the risk of exposing sensitive data about American families, businesses, nonprofits and individuals to a third party.

There is no real clear indicator of what DOGE and Musk’s plans are and what they plan on using this confidential information for, but it has alarmed many federal officials, judges and agencies. Most cannot understand why DOGE accessing the IDRS would lead to minimizing fraud. It also brings into question the right of privacy that all individuals and entities are entitled to in the United States under the constitution. Because of this, many say DOGE’s actions and requests are unconstitutional. Especially because DOGE is not a completely recognized government agency, they’re only contracted by the government.

Along with DOGE scrutinizing the IRS, as of Feb. 20 7,000 IRS employees will be laid off by President Trump in the middle of tax season. This is roughly 7% of the agency’s workforce. The employee cuts are just one example of Trump’s goal to downsize the government and get rid of everything that is not of “importance.” These efforts have affected bank regulators, forest workers, rocket scientists and tens of thousands of other government employees that were originally told their job is necessary. 

Again, there is no clear indicator that these downsizing efforts will be beneficial to the American people, economy or the government itself.