IRS consultant charged with disclosing tax return info to news organizations | Hacker News Reader

IRS consultant charged with disclosing tax return info to news organizations

justice.gov

67 pointsdanso77 comments

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I'm glad he's being charged. I wouldn't like it if some activist stole my data and made it public. If you believe that it's in the public interest for this information to be released, you should advocate for disclosure laws. For example, one possible law might require presidential candidates to release their tax returns. I support disclosure through legal means, not through vigilante behavior.

Absolutely. The government is the one organization that can legally use violence and the threat of violence to force you to do things that you don't want to do. Particularly in the case of the IRS, they are forcing you to divulge highly personal data to them every year. Using your privileged position inside that organization to steal and release that data is unconscionable. If you think it should be released and available, advocate for disclosure laws that can go through the democratic process.

Great in principle, zero chance of it happening.

Congress voting to show their cards would be like them taking a pay cut.

No law can do that; the Constitution specifies eligibility for representatives, senators, and presidents. Courts take that literally. In 2019, California did pass a law requiring presidential candidates to disclose 5 years of tax returns. That was more or less immediately and unanimously invalidated by the California state supreme court.

Yes it seems that additional eligibility requirements may require a constitutional amendment. But the requirement could instead be imposed on some other part of the electoral process, like ballot access.

yes, lets advocate a run around the constitution. That doesn't seem like it would end badly at all...

In what world would it be an unpopular opinion that private information shared with a governmental organisation should stay private?

I don't want the information that I've sent to several agencies over the years made public. Some is medical, some is financial.

It could be used against me in my field of work.

No thank you.

You misread the post you're replying to and are agreeing with it.

It’s possible that they’re simply agreeing with it.

No they're right. I misread it. Even looking at it again, I think the post I was replying to was saying that nobody would have a problem with releasing their records. I don't see what I'm missing.

Ah, no in that case you did misread it. They’re saying that “private information shared with a governmental organisation should stay private” is a popular opinion.

The “unpopular” and “in what world” act like a double-negative.

I missed the "un" on "unpopular". Dyslexia is a real turd sometimes. Thank you for the explanation.

Remember when basically all of congress potentially had their health records breached?

https://apnews.com/article/congress-data-breach-hack-identit...

> In what world would it be an unpopular opinion that private information shared with a governmental organisation should stay private?

A highly politically polarized one.

My understanding is this guy disclosed Trump's tax returns to some liberal news organizations. Many people hate Trump so much that I think they'd oppose this prosecution and characterize this guys actions as a public service.

In a world where it's coerced, like tax returns are.

I don't entirely understand. You say, that if information you provide is coerced, then it is OK to make it public? Ie. if I force you to tell me something intimate or personal, I can share it with everyone?

I would be in favor of all financial data being public.

That is a valid political standpoint. You should vote for somebody who are aligned with it, in what case it would not be private information anymore.

There’s no point in Presidential candidates disclosing their tax returns.

With a year or two preparation, you can make your tax return say whatever you want. Its only purposes is to determine taxes owed for a given year. That’s it. Not provide a summary of your financial interests.

I’ve personally seen political candidates structure their lives in a way so that their tax return says nothing.

One candidate and her husband sold massive business interests two years before running, with no expectation of payment until after the election.

Those tax forms honestly said they had no income and no business interests.

Which is legit, because the IRS is about getting the money it’s owed, not providing transparency into an individuals financial incentives.

> With a year or two preparation, you can make your tax return say whatever you want

Which is why they usually disclose more.

When a person applies for a sensitive job, usually have to declare their assets and accounts.

Assets and accounts aren’t taxable, so don’t appear on income tax forms.

Tax forms really aren’t about transparency at all.

Correct. When I held a security clearance, I had to file financial disclosures every other year, detailing every asset and debt I had -- bank accounts, loans, cars, boats (LOL), retirement accounts, cryptocurrency, everything.

Positions like President should have to disclose most of this information publicly -- lightly redacted, so no need to publish their bank account numbers, but the figures and institutions should be public knowledge, or at least metadata about institutions.

I get the sentiment but under the current system of government it does seem quite unlikely such a law would be passed. IMO if we think something should be legal (i.e. if you think presidents' taxes should be public information) then it's ok to support vigilantism that acts towards that end, as a reasonable alternative to years or decades of lobbying.

Who then gets to decide what should be released? The random employee who gets hired by the IRS and granted access to the system gets to make those decisions?

Suppose some random person decided that all software engineer (or whatever your job is) information should be public so they release your tax returns. How do you protect yourself? Do you just have to shrug and say, "well $RANDOM_PERSON thinks this is right, so I guess it is"

The court of popular opinion gets to decide.

If it's being done by individual vigilante employees, despite being already against the law, how does the court of popular opinion control it?

It’s illegal so that individual employee will be brought before the courts. If the employee was justified, the jury will nullify their conviction.

When is the last time you saw a jury nullification? I agree, juries should be able to overturn convictions if they think the law is unjust, but that simply doesn't happen. The entire legal system is very careful about choosing and guiding jurors to judge based on the law, not to judge the law itself.

Intimidating people with acts of violence for political objectives actually falls outside of the definition of vigilantism. Vigilantism refers to taking what's perceived to be current law into your own hands.

> IMO if we think something should be legal

We don’t know that until we actually pass a law. In fact, if the law states that something is unlawful, illegal or criminal, that is the prior agreement we are already under per the law.

> then it's ok to support vigilantism that acts towards that end

It costs you nothing to “support” it, unless you’re the criminal.

How’s it vigilantism? I don’t see the crime.

> If you believe that it's in the public interest for this information to be released

Public official A promised to do so, publicly and repeatedly. Public official A ostensibly earned some level of goodwill for declaring that. I kind of feel like the leaker held up A's end of the contract for him.

Put it another way: If I published an ad on a website you visited promising "$500 just for clicking on this link", then you tracked me down and took the $500, would anyone feel bad for me? It would have been an illegal act, but it would hardly feel like a perversion of justice.

> That person would still get charged with a crime just like this person is.

“News Organization 2” is ProPublica, and they censored most names to avoid lawsuits I guess.

Random fact; The top 15 is entirely new money, which was surprising.

1- https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...

that would make sense right? old money isn't going to take more income than required to make purchases, otherwise you pay taxes. if you include wealth gains and not just income, they will be more heavily diversified so their gains will be much smaller but hopefully more consistent.

this true tax rate shenanigans drives me nuts though. so dishonest. yeah my true tax rate is like 5% too.. my house appreciated so much last few years...

I don’t know why ProPublica sullies its name by not being extra clear that they are complaining about the lack of a wealth/overall property tax.

We already have property taxes. It would be simple to make an argument for or against expanding it.

Or it could make an argument for marginal sales taxes (what I would prefer), to capture the rich people that borrow against their assets for their spending needs.

> We already have property taxes.

Sort of? They're a patchwork state system and they're heavily kneecapped because in many states property tax is not really proportional to the market value.

In California, effectively the longer you've owned the property the less you tend to pay as a fraction of the value, which in a sense is regressive because younger, less affluent homeowners pay more tax.

The point is there exists a tax you have to pay for simply owning something (although the tax rate is not 1 to 1 with market value in many places). So now we are just talking about applying to other equities like stocks.

> In California, effectively the longer you've owned the property the less you tend to pay as a fraction of the value, which in a sense is regressive because younger, less affluent homeowners pay more tax.

For sure, it is remarkable how many ways US society screws young people (fewer voters) in favor of the old (more voters) once you start looking. And in California, it is remarkable how explicitly they screwed young people with poorer ancestors versus young people with richer ancestors.

> The point is there exists a tax you have to pay for simply owning something

Not at the federal level, and the methodology used for computing effective tax rates in this article (both for typical households and the centibillionaires) is explicitly federal-only, so that's not really true.

I agree with you broadly but the Constitution does not permit a federal wealth tax. The 16th Amendment authorizes only income tax.

I’m referring to Americans philosophically accepting a wealth tax. There was no federal income tax at one point too.

I'm not holding my breath.

In any event I think ProPublica laying out the data in this fashion is necessary groundwork if that's going to become a part of the political consciousness. The intellectual argument for a wealth tax to control inequality has been pretty compelling ever since Capital in the Twenty-First Century, but advocating for a constitutional amendment is obviously premature.

US property taxes are essentially use taxes, which have analogues in other countries, not wealth taxes. If it was a wealth tax then you'd be able to deduct any outstanding mortgage debt.

It's just regressive in general. normal people, especially today, have half or more of their net worth tied up in their home. so all of us normal people are effectively being wealth taxed while the very richest are effectively not being.

My wealth tax in texas is ~2% :( I've got say for example 100k house with 50k equity and 50k cash and stock assets. I pay 2k in property taxes on 100k in property but 2k/(50k+50k)=2%. not real #s but real percent.

> younger, less affluent homeowners

There's also some bifurcation; older people with no money just seem to disappear and die especially after exiting the workforce, compared to younger people who are more visible and have more possibilities. In light of those recent news articles highlighting the disproportionate rise of homelessness in the Boomer generation, etc

> this true tax rate shenanigans drives me nuts though

Not only you. It’s plain lying, but well, I guess the audience liked it.

Interesting article but avoids mentioning (for a dozen pages) that capital gains are not taxed until sold, conflating that with income, and not mentioning that it is problematic to do it any other way.

This fact is well known among anyone paying attention. Perhaps not busy folks without any assets unfortunately.

We do pay property tax on real estate in most places however, which is one strategy. Perhaps time for one on capital assets as well. While unpopular, the alternative—that the 1% hoover up everything and pay no taxes is worse IMHO.

Also doesn't include Musk's recent giant tax bill.

This seems completely dishonest:

Warren Buffett - $125M income reported - $23.7M taxes paid "real tax rate" = 0.10%

I mean, this math only makes sense if you rewrite how math works...

The Propublica piece:

They conflate unrealized capital gains with income for a dozen pages and then finally mention why it works that way. I think they should have led with that for full disclosure.

What about when IRS shares your financial information with google and medallia from their site through javascript includes?

https://directpay.irs.gov/directpay/payment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medallia

    …irs.gov
    …google-analytics.com
    …googletagmanager.com
    …medallia.com

I really hope any of the candidatea running, including RFK hopefully, make good on their promises to move agencies out of DC.

The level of accountability and shame this individual would experience -walking down the street- if he lived anytown, USA is quite different from what happens in the big metros including DC

Believe it or not but in Finland this is done by the government. The tax authority will share the top earners' private data directly with the media.

Pay Transparency giving fellow citizens the Right to Request information regarding co-workers' pay and wage determination criteria exists as policy in Norway, Finland, Germany, and Spain (at least).

It's not so much the tax authority reaching out to share "top earners" private data so much as it is media companies requesting what is considered public data of prominent individuals.

Only five years? Seems like he should be facing much more than that.

It’s funny to me that this announcement:

- Came on a Friday evening

- Was a criminal information filing, meaning it was not an indictment and the target likely wasn’t arrested

- Was not precipitated by a major press conference by DOJ/Treasury

Perhaps because the current administration was “soft” on this issue due to a desire to raise taxes on the wealthiest individuals?

Or perhaps they were eager to make the announcement prior to a government shutdown…

WSJ suggests he's pleading guilty which would explain why it's only one count.

From news articles, it seems that 'Public Official A' is Donald Trump.

You'd assume so, but I'm surprised anyone even had access to those without a ton of paperwork and access controls and two-people-always-looking rules.

Ah c'mon, this is HN.

Who here hasn't had at least a read-only connection to a relational database with something sensitive on it.

Yup. Mostly the US operates (both privately and in government) on an expectation of good behavior, and mostly it works. I believe this is referred to as a “high trust” society?

Why? There isn't a particularly good reason for these to be secret in the first place.

Doxxing from a government employee should get him life. If they can do it to Trump they can do it to you and me.

And how do you know it hasn't been modified?

Lets see, the guy has embarassing tax info on important people. What are the odds he'll be forgiven, somehow? Because some important person will go to bat for him.

He released all the info publicly...

...and the names were redacted? If I read it right.

The names are redacted in the charges because they don't want to continue spreading them. The original info was not redacted

Who, whom?

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