IRS Watchdog: 52 Employees Snooped on Celebrity and Official Tax Records 86 Times
The Treasury inspector general says the IRS cannot reliably stop or detect snooping, failed to fire 22 people who accessed records without authorization, and left 175 taxpayers uninformed.
Dozens of Internal Revenue Service employees improperly looked at the tax records of celebrities, government officials and business leaders over a three-year period, and the agency has no effective way to stop it, according to a report released Friday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
The inspector general identified 86 "suspicious accesses" of the records of 30 taxpayers by 52 IRS employees between 2022 and 2025. The report said the records belonged to "United States government officials, business leaders, and entertainers." The cases were referred to the IRS's criminal investigation division for further review.
The report was blunt about the agency's defenses. It concluded that the IRS's Unauthorized Access program "is not adequately addressing the risk of unauthorized access to taxpayers' accounts." The agency lacks effective controls to prevent employees from opening high-profile taxpayers' accounts and cannot reliably detect it after the fact, the inspector general found.
Discipline was also inconsistent. The inspector general found 22 employees who were not terminated even though they accessed taxpayer records without the taxpayer's consent or IRS authorization. The agency also failed to notify 175 taxpayers that an unauthorized employee had looked at their records, because staff did not follow procedures. An additional 101 taxpayers were never notified because the employees involved resigned or retired before they could be disciplined.
The inspector general made eight recommendations, including improving IRS systems and reducing the level of access given to employees. The IRS agreed with seven of them and said it plans corrective action by December 2026. It disagreed with a recommendation to set timeliness standards for notifying victims.
Unauthorized inspection of tax returns is a federal crime, and the IRS has long told employees they may look only at records they need to do their jobs. The practice, known inside the agency as UNAX, has been a recurring problem for decades, and the inspector general's office routinely audits it.
The findings mean that people with high public profiles, whose returns draw the most curiosity, have little assurance that the agency would catch a coworker who opened their file. They also mean that in 175 cases the taxpayers themselves were never told. The report arrives at a sensitive moment for the agency. President Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over leaked tax records and dropped it in May 2026. The new findings are likely to fuel congressional pressure for stronger safeguards over the most sensitive financial data the government holds.
