Democratic lawmakers express concern that Tesla CEO is seeking to weaponise the tax system against his rivals.
Elon Musk’s task force for streamlining the United States government is seeking access to troves of taxpayer information, media outlets have reported, prompting fears of privacy violations and retribution against political rivals.
In the latest phase of his sweeping cost-cutting drive, Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are pushing to access the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) protected Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS), outlets including The Associated Press, CNN, The New York Times and the Washington Post reported on Monday.
The IDRS gives IRS employees access to sensitive taxpayer data belonging to millions of Americans, such as Social Security numbers, home addresses, property records and salary information.
DOGE had yet to gain access to the system as of Sunday evening, multiple media outlets reported.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said that direct access to the IRS database was necessary to root out “deeply entrenched” waste, fraud and abuse.
“DOGE will continue to shine a light on the fraud they uncover as the American people deserve to know what their government has been spending their hard-earned tax dollars on,” Fields said.
The move has alarmed Democratic lawmakers and other critics of US President Donald Trump’s administration amid concerns that Musk, the world’s richest person, is taking control of large areas of the federal government with little oversight.
In a letter to the IRS on Monday, Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren expressed concern that Musk was seeking to weaponise the tax system to target US citizens and businesses as part of a political agenda.
“The IRS must immediately disclose to the Senate Committee on Finance the full extent of the potential access to IRS systems and data granted to DOGE team members so that the Committee can address any efforts by DOGE personnel to gain access to taxpayer records at the IRS, which may constitute criminal violations of federal privacy laws,” Wyden and Warren wrote.
On Monday, Musk appeared to signal his intention to use taxpayer data to target Trump’s political opponents in a post on his social media platform X.
After an X user said in a post responding to Democratic Senator Adam Schiff that Musk wanted to “snoop around” the finances of the California lawmaker, not members of the general public, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO shared the post with an emoji of an index finger pointing downward.
Meanwhile, a new X account called DOGE IRS asked members of the public to share “insights on finding and fixing waste, fraud and abuse” at the IRS.