- The IRS has long protected the privacy of tax filers, including undocumented immigrant tax filers. Section 6103 states that tax “returns and return information shall be confidential,” and strictly limits the sharing of tax data even between federal agencies.
- In June 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sought millions of taxpayer records for the purposes of immigration enforcement, under a narrow section of privacy law that allows for data sharing for a specific criminal inquiry.
- The IRS has shared roughly 47,000 records with DHS. In sharing the data, the IRS violated the law “approximately 42,695 times,” a federal judge has ruled. Data sharing between the IRS and ICE is currently stayed by a federal court.
DATA IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Data highlights:
The IRS has long protected the privacy of tax filers, including undocumented immigrant tax filers. Taxpayer privacy is governed by Section 6103 of the U.S. tax code, which states that tax “returns and return information shall be confidential,” except in specific and narrowly defined cases. Section 6103 strictly limits the sharing of tax data even between federal agencies. Violating taxpayer privacy protections, either by improperly inspecting or improperly disclosing taxpayer information, can result in penalties including fines and imprisonment.
Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, or ITINs, are used by those who are ineligible for a Social Security Number, a category of taxpayer that includes many undocumented immigrants. In tax year 2022, approximately 3.8 million returns included at least one ITIN and reported about $14.4 billion in income tax after credits and $6.5 billion in Social Security and Medicare taxes, according to the Taxpayer Advocate Service.
Historically, the IRS has encouraged undocumented immigrants to file income tax returns. Records of taxpaying are an important component of many green card applications, part of demonstrating “good moral character” and “physical presence” in the United States. “The IRS has strong processes in place to protect the confidentiality of taxpayer information, and this includes information related to tax returns filed using ITINs,” the IRS told the Washington Post in 2017. “There is no authorization under this provision to share tax data with ICE.”
Scroll down for a timeline of the changes to taxpayer privacy protections and the treatment of immigrant tax filers since January 2025 ↓
You can also download a spreadsheet with the full list of available data, including the range of years for which data is available.