DOGE presses to check federal benefits payments against IRS tax records

Officials from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service have expressed interest in using personal tax records to check federal benefits payments for fraud, which would mobilize the IRS to drive the Trump administration’s campaign to cut government spending, according to three people familiar with the situation and records obtained by The Washington Post.

Gavin Kliger and Sam Corcos, DOGE representatives embedded at the tax agency, on Friday asked IRS lawyers to assist in creating an “omnibus” agreement with other federal agencies that would allow a broad swath of federal officials to cross-reference benefits rolls with taxpayer data, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

The request prompted significant alarm within the IRS, the people said. By law, taxpayer data is heavily guarded — improper disclosure carries both civil and criminal penalties — and the agency closely polices how other federal officials use its systems, as well. IRS lawyers quickly arrived at the conclusion that DOGE’s request would violate privacy laws, the people said. Federal statute makes it illegal for the IRS to share taxpayer data with other agencies for reasons unrelated to administering taxes.

Kliger and Corcos, according to records obtained by The Post, specifically mentioned investigating eligibility and fraud within student loan and grant programs and SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps, which serves nearly 42 million Americans.

The request escalates the Trump administration’s increasing interest in controlling sensitive IRS data. DOGE previously asked for sweeping access to IRS systems that would have provided access to financial information on virtually every individual, business and nonprofit in the country. The Department of Homeland Security in recent days also asked the IRS for the home addresses of 700,000 people suspected of being in the country illegally, The Post reported Friday. And Kliger and Corcos are seeking access to IRS procurement systems, the people said, to audit the tax agency’s contracts.

So far, IRS leaders have rebuffed those inquiries, the people said, but acting commissioner Melanie Krause, who took over at the agency Friday night, has indicated she is interested in complying with DOGE’s requests.

“If you’re interested in efficiency, there are reasons why you want that data, but there have to be safeguards,” said Nina Olson, who was the national taxpayer advocate, the IRS’s internal watchdog, from 2001 to 2019, “because you could really undermine the tax systems of this country, or other systems, and people will be unwilling to participate.”

“More gaslighting from career bureaucrats and the mainstream media,” said White House spokesman Harrison Fields. “Our government systems are outdated, and individuals with proper clearances are modernizing them in accordance with the law.”

Kliger’s agreement to work at the IRS prevents him from accessing personal taxpayer data. Corcos has not yet been granted access to IRS systems because of data privacy concerns, the three people said.

Kliger, Corcos and representatives from the IRS and Treasury Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The federal government’s siloed systems for managing taxes and benefits has for years been criticized by experts in both parties. The inability of some agencies to share data with others makes it more difficult to administer programs. For instance, during the COVID pandemic, the Labor Department office tasked with disbursing large unemployment benefits could not receive taxpayer data from the IRS, which contributed to significant fraud in the program when states administered the payments.

The IRS does already give taxpayers the choice to allow the agency to share their data with other departments that administer benefits programs.

Many European governments already have centralized data-sharing, which makes it easier to track if any individual is receiving fraudulent or wasteful payments, but some have also run into legal problems around audit processing and data security.

“The idea of making all the databases work together by creating a system that sucks all that information together — that’s great. That’s how they do things in Denmark and a lot of other countries,” said Matt Bruenig, founder of the People’s Policy Project, a left-leaning think tank, while adding it was reasonable to be suspicious of Musk’s intentions with the data. “This is a good way to get things more efficient is getting all the administrative data more efficient, which would make it easier to administer programs.”

The DOGE request reflects Musk’s broader desire to root out wasteful federal payments. The billionaire Trump adviser has argued that poor technical systems and bureaucratic ineptitude contributes to hundreds of billions of dollars in fraudulent payments each year, which if eliminated could help close the federal deficit. Longtime budget experts in both parties have ridiculed this idea as wildly unrealistic, saying fraud and waste only accounts for a few billion dollars of the government’s roughly $2 trillion annual deficit.

But Musk has continued to assert without evidence that better tracking of federal spending would help solve the nation’s fiscal imbalance, most recently saying on an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast last week that Social Security is “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and that the retirement program for seniors wastes $100 billion per year.