During the height of tax season, billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is reportedly aiming to centralize all IRS data around a single portal allowing third parties easier access to taxpayer information, and will begin efforts next week with a “hackathon” to find solutions. DOGE apparently believes it can complete this project in about 30 days.
As first reported by Wired, the goal is the creation of a central application programming interface, or API, a type of software that lets computer programs communicate with each other, enabling direct passage of data. Any software integration depends on API access to function.
While the IRS already makes use of APIs—such as those it maintains for e-Services, Income Verification Express Service and Information Return Intake System—the group’s aim is to create a single super API from which one could access all agency data, enabling users to view and manipulate it in one place. Such a move would also facilitate increased cloud connectivity by third party developers. The project will likely need a private sector partner, and Wired said it would likely be surveillance tech company Palentir, run by fellow billionaire Peter Thiel.
Such a move would also serve to take the dozens of disparate systems housed in on-premises data centers, purposely compartmentalized from the cloud, into this new API. It is unknown whether, or how, the new API would account for the numerous special permissions currently required to access certain types of data. Wired said this has led to security concerns, as the IRS has sensitive data that would be of great value to criminals, and centralizing everything under a single API could disrupt the systems of control the service already has in place to safeguard taxpayer information.
It is unknown how the wave of layoffs at the IRS might affect this project. Of particular note is the fact that the administration has placed 50 senior IRS tech leaders on paid administrative leave. However, overall headcount in the short term seems subject to rapid change, as many of those same IRS employees who were laid off were rehired to help with the tax season load. Nevertheless, last week the IRS shuttered its Office of Civil Rights and Compliance, which had 130 employees, made plans to lay off 20,000 more, and most recently has eyed further staff reductions.
Meanwhile, the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security have reached an agreement to share IRS information on immigrants with DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit. Under the memorandum of understanding, ICE will be able to ask the IRS for information such as addresses of people who have been ordered to leave the U.S. IRS officials had previously objected to sharing more extensive information such as Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, and the disagreement reportedly led to the departure of the IRS’s former acting chief counsel.
Musk, via DOGE, has said little about the IRS on his social media but has criticized the agency for its reliance on contractors as well as the slow pace of its modernization program. Recently, the government froze $1.5 billion in modernization contracts, which will either be canceled or be modified along pay-for-performance lines.
