A coalition of congressional members filed an amicus brief in a federal appeals court after dozens of advocacy organizations told lawmakers that the IRS’ bulk sharing of taxpayer address data with ICE is illegal, undermines voluntary tax compliance, and violates privacy laws designed to prevent the executive branch from weaponizing confidential tax information.
Revelations From Disclosure Declaration
The legal challenge concerns a new IRS address-sharing policy and a related Memorandum of Understanding with ICE. After the IRS disclosed confidential address information for approximately 47,300 taxpayers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in response to a bulk request in August 2025, a federal judge stepped in. In November 2025, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction, finding the data sharing likely violated federal law and halting further disclosures.
During the appeal of that injunction, the case took a material turn when the IRS filed a supplemental declaration from its chief risk and control officer, Dottie A. Romo. The Romo declaration was submitted “to modify certain prior statements” and admitted the IRS had provided addresses to ICE even when the requests were “either incomplete or insufficiently populated.”
In a subsequent indicative ruling late February, the district court stated that under this flawed system, “ICE could have submitted a request with an ‘address’ like ‘Don’t Care 12345,’ or, ‘00000,’ and still received a taxpayer’s address.”
Lawmakers and Advocates Oppose Policy
In their March 30 brief to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the 115 members of Congress assert that the IRS’ actions defy the strict confidentiality protections of IRC § 6103. Enacted nearly 50 years ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the statute was designed to anchor the principle that tax return information “shall be confidential” and prevent the “weaponization” of taxpayer data by the executive branch.
The lawmakers argue that ICE’s bulk requests for information failed to meet the law’s explicit requirements, which serve as a substitute for judicial oversight, and that Congress has repeatedly considered and rejected proposals to allow the use of taxpayer information for immigration enforcement.
A coalition of 103 advocacy, civil rights, and service-provider organizations echoed these concerns, warning in a March 26 letter that the IRS-ICE data sharing is part of a broader, systematic effort to “repurpose government data for immigration enforcement.” The coalition argues the policy creates a chilling effect that is already measurable, citing a Yale Budget Lab study estimating it could cost more than $300 billion in lost tax revenue between 2026 and 2035. For decades, the IRS encouraged noncitizens to file taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, assuring them the information was for tax purposes only.
The groups warn that when these taxpayers fear that filing will expose them to enforcement, they stop filing, which “reduces revenue for every federal program, weakens the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and devastates local economies.”
Recent Filings
In its March 19 brief, the Center for Taxpayer Rights argues that the district court correctly enjoined the policy because it is unlawful and was adopted in an “arbitrary and capricious” fashion. The brief argues that for decades, the IRS’ disclosure policy was “rooted in individualized review, segmentation, and limited, last-resort disclosure.”
The new policy, it states, replaced that careful process with one designed to handle “massive requests for confidential taxpayer information … quickly in bulk without much human interaction.” The Center argues this abrupt reversal, made without considering the reliance interests of taxpayers or the foreseeable harm to tax compliance, is the definition of arbitrary decision-making that the Administrative Procedure Act was enacted to prevent.
But the government, in its March 13 opposition to the remand motion, disputed that it created a new, unlawful policy. It asserts that its only practice is to comply with legal disclosure requirements upon receiving a compliant request. It characterizes the thousands of flawed disclosures admitted to in the Romo declaration as the result of an “inadvertent misapplication” of the policy, not evidence that the policy itself is arbitrary or unlawful.
The government further argues that the injunction mischaracterizes the order by establishing a “pre-clearance regime” for future data-sharing requests. Its reply contends that the district court’s order harms its ability to carry out its legal duties and prevents it from “effectuating statutes enacted by representatives of its people.”
The case is Center for Taxpayer Rights v. IRS, No. 26-5006.
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