IRS Plans to Allow Tax Preparers to Sell Data

The IRS is quietly moving to loosen the once-inviolable privacy of federal income-tax returns. If it succeeds, accountants and other tax-return preparers will be able to sell information from individual returns - or even entire returns - to marketers and data brokers.

The change is raising alarm among consumer and privacy-rights advocates. It was included in a set of proposed rules that the Treasury Department and the IRS published in the Dec. 8 Federal Register, where the official notice labeled them "not a significant regulatory action."

IRS officials portray the changes as housecleaning to update outmoded regulations adopted before it began accepting returns electronically. The proposed rules, which would become effective 30 days after a final version is published, would require a tax preparer to obtain written consent before selling tax information.

Critics call the changes a dangerous breach in personal and financial privacy. They say the requirement for signed consent would prove meaningless for many taxpayers, especially those hurriedly reviewing stacks of documents before a filing deadline.

"The normal interaction is that the taxpayer just signs what the tax preparer puts in front of them," said Jean Ann Fox of the Consumer Federation of America, one of several groups fighting the changes. "They think, 'This person is a tax professional, and I'm going to rely on them.' "

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/business/14147002.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

the IRS last night and found that it is apprently ALREADY legal for some preparers to sell your data.

The new rules are actually to tighten third-parties, like the employees of websites for online tax returns, existing ability to sell your stuff. Since the last rule change, more people see your returns than before, so they are including all those new parties in the requirement that you permit them to sell you.

As near as I can tell, the IRS still can't sell your data.