this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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Summary

Elon Musk has requested access to the IRS's Integrated Data Retrieval System, which contains personal tax information for millions of Americans.

The request has not yet been granted but has raised alarm among privacy experts and government officials.

Critics fear Musk could misuse the data, especially given his existing federal contracts. The IRS is considering a memorandum to permit access, despite strict rules against unauthorized viewing.

A federal judge has already blocked DOGE from accessing Treasury data, but other agencies remain vulnerable.

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[–] [email protected] 144 points 4 days ago (2 children)

For what reason? How does accessing individual taxpayers private income/tax information allow you weed out wasteful government spending?

[–] [email protected] 104 points 4 days ago (2 children)

By arbitrarily denying regular people their tax returns for the sake of "saving money"

[–] [email protected] 68 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yup. Tax refunds are about to become a thing of the past. For the bottom 99%, that is.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 4 days ago (1 children)

IRS audits for politically motivated reasons are about to become a thing.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago

And tampering for cover-ups.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I don't think there's anything "arbitrary" about who they fuck over.

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 4 days ago (8 children)

Increasingly I am only seeing one solution to this Musk problem.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Increasingly I am seeing Musk as the one solution to this problem:

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Piano wire and a train station?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It is a classic for the Russian Oligarchs...what the hell, it's traditional.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Yeah we need to start taxing these rich grifters.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 days ago

Yes taxes, I mean taxes.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 days ago (1 children)

From someone who took Records and Information Management years ago, this is a huge red flag and everyone in the US should be alarmed and pissed off about this.

Elon and his DOGE fools have no right to have access to American’s IRS records.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago (2 children)

What? You don't think some teenager with a stupid online nickname and Wicked Cool 7331 Hax0r Coding Skillz has the right to your data and my data?

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Great, I'm about to get audited by the billionaire that probably doesn't pay taxes. Lovely.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

Even better, the "audit" will be done by some teenager named "Big Balls".

I'm sure they have the wisdom, the experience, and level-headed presence of mind to properly deal with that kind of responsibility.

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 4 days ago (12 children)

I think he should get access to it.

I think everyone should get access to it.

That's how we do it in Scandinavia. It's been good for fighting corruption.

If your neighbour has a brand new Lamborghini in his driveway, while filling an income of 20k€ the last year. Maybe ask the IRS to look a bit closer at his finances.

I use it to see how much my colleagues make, so I have a leg to stand on in salary negotiations.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 4 days ago

That's not how it works here... Don't pretend and welcome his horseshit. This is probably about making a personal enemies list

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 days ago (2 children)

In a fair democracy, sure. But the US ain’t that; I wouldn’t be surprised if they used donation write-offs to target political opponents.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The only way the Trump administration is going to do anything about people cheating on their taxes is to pardon them for it.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Fuck Musk and ship him back to South Africa without a US passport.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Fuck Musk but this thing of shipping people around is crap. Just jail him like any regular criminal.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Nah, just put him in one of those idiot squishers like the Titan-1C that took out a handful of billionaires last year.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm shocked they even asked

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

They figured they would try before they took it anyway just in case they could get some good PR

[–] [email protected] 53 points 4 days ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

How would that help make the government more efficient? What is his justification?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

So given that his little team of unqualified racist have already proven to leak classified data and can't secure a server with even basic security that someone on the homeserver community would do, it would be funny if this is how Trump's tax returns would come out to light.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They are worming their way through the various departments looking for something....dirt on their opponents?

[–] [email protected] 51 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Probably dirt on everyone. And just to farm for their own purposes. Collate all the federal data, pump it into his grok LLM, and try to create his own file on every consumer.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 days ago (4 children)

AI generated dossiers, terrifying. Imagine all the crimes the AI can hallucinate a person did. And with generative audiovisual AI can manufacturer the evidence.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

Read only access, right?

Right?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago

hell.

the fuck.

NO.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago

At last we'll see Trump's tax records 👀🍿

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago (1 children)

All Americans should freeze your credit immediately.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (4 children)

All Americans should have their credit frozen in general. You can unfreeze it any time you want to make a big finance decision like a mortgage but there's no reason to just leave it out there the rest of the time.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

And he'll get that access, I guarantee it. Hope I'm wrong.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

You're not wrong We're fucked. I'm waiting for everyone else to get mad enough to revolt with me. Fuck Elon Musk. No one voted for that cunt.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

Hes good at doing things that look effective to slow ppl

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

Oh, I'm sure it's all for good reasons of "efficiency" and more of fElon's altruism and deep concern for the country.

🙄

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

The only positive thing here is that they ask instead of just take.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)

He wants to live like common people. He wants to see whatever common people see.

— he’s never paid any tax, so he obviously wants to live vicariously with the eyes of the poors. Not as one though, just wants to get closer to understanding them by looking at their tax returns, illegally.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago (2 children)
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