IRS, White House Clashed Over Illegal Migrants Data

The Internal Revenue Service clashed with the White House over using tax data to help locate suspected illegal immigrants hours before Trump administration officials forced IRS Commissioner Billy Long from his post Friday, Washington Post reported.

The Department of Homeland Security sent the IRS a list Thursday of 40,000 names of people DHS officials thought were in the country illegally and asked the IRS to use confidential taxpayer data to verify their addresses.

On Friday, though, the IRS responded that it was able to verify fewer than 3 percent of the names immigration enforcement officials submitted, the people said.

The names the agency could match were mainly the individuals for whom DHS provided an individual taxpayer identification number. An ITIN is an IRS-specific ID that immigrants often use in place of a Social Security number on a tax filing.

White House officials requested additional information on the taxpayers the IRS identified, the people said — specifically, if any of them had claimed the earned income tax credit, which can reduce the tax bill for some low-income filers. The IRS declined to provide that information, citing taxpayer privacy rights.

Still, the people did not know if tension over the IRS’s role in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation drive contributed to Long’s departure from the IRS.