IRS plan would allow sale of tax data to marketers

lBY JEFF GELLES
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS

March 21, 2006

PHILADELPHIA -- The Internal Revenue Service is quietly moving to loosen the once-inviolable privacy of federal income-tax returns.

If it succeeds, accountants and other tax-return preparers for the first time would be able to sell information from individual returns -- or even entire returns -- to marketers and data brokers.

The change is in a set of proposed rules the Treasury Department and the IRS published in the Dec. 8 Federal Register, where the official notice labeled them "not a significant regulatory action."