A federal judge in Washington ruled the federal government likely violated the law in adopting the information-release policy.
A federal judge on Nov. 21 ordered the Internal Revenue Service not to share tax return information that immigration officials want to use for the deportation of illegal immigrants.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the District of Columbia said the plaintiffs “have shown a substantial likelihood” that an inter-agency agreement allowing the sharing of the tax information is “unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act.”
The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit “have shown that the IRS’s disclosure of confidential taxpayer address information to ICE was contrary to law because it did not comply with certain requirements in Internal Revenue Code Section 6103(i)(2).”
“The IRS’s unlawful conduct has created a substantial likelihood that Plaintiffs and their members will suffer irreparable harm,” the judge said.
The case is known as Center for Taxpayer Rights v. Internal Revenue Service.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
