IRS contractor leaked more than 400,000 taxpayers’ information

• The IRS said more than 405,000 taxpayers had their information stolen and leaked to the media. The acting commissioner said 89% of those impacted are business entities.
• This is a significant increase from the 70,000 taxpayers the service originally admitted to.
• The perpetrator, Charles Littlejohn, was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024.

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The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said more than 405,000 taxpayers, including President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, had their information stolen by a now-imprisoned contractor who leaked the returns to the media. This is a significant increase from the 70,000 taxpayers the service had originally admitted to. 

“The IRS’s admission confirms the Committee’s suspicion and recent reports that show the scope of the leak was much broader than what the Biden Administration’s IRS initially led the public to believe,” the House Judiciary Committee stated in a post on X. “This is a MASSIVE scandal.” 

In a letter to Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, acting IRS Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell said 89% of those impacted were business entities. He added they were all informed in writing and given a dedicated email address for follow-up inquiries. 

In January 2024, Charles Littlejohn was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing the tax information of public officials, including President Trump and Musk, and leaking it to news outlets, including the New York Times and ProPublica. 

According to the Department of Justice, Littlejohn accessed the tax returns in 2019 and 2020. He searched a database using broad parameters meant to conceal his true intent. Littlejohn then uploaded the tax returns to a private website to avoid systems meant to prevent large downloads and uploads from IRS devices. He saved the tax returns to multiple personal storage devices, including an iPod, and sent them to the news organizations. 

More than 50 articles were published using the stolen information.