Are Elon Musk and DOGE looking at your personal tax data?
Sidebar
The Washington Post
4.1 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode, The Washington Post's Libby Casey and JM Rieger are joined by congressional economic correspondent Jacob Bogage to discuss Elon Musk's DOGE team attempting to access a highly guarded IRS computer system that contains Americans' personal financial information. The crew breaks down what's actually in the files DOGE representatives are seeking, why, and what makes career government officials are so concerned.
Then, the Trump administration continues to shrink the size of federal government by laying off employees – and over the weekend, haphazard firings, which included employees at almost every government agency, including at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Look what happened. Is this crazy? We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in the history. |
| 0:08.5 | Make America great victory. How can you be against them? |
| 0:16.7 | The IRS. It collects our taxes, sometimes sends us refunds or asks for more money. |
| 0:23.4 | And those federal taxes go to pay for government. Now, the IRS has a lot of our sensitive data. |
| 0:28.1 | So why are Elon Musk and Doge trying to access that data? What do they want to do with it? |
| 0:33.3 | And where are they also trying to access personal information at the Social Security Administration? |
| 0:38.3 | This is Sidebar from The Washington Post. I'm Libby Casey. Welcome. Today I'm with senior video |
| 0:43.1 | journalist J.M. Rieger and special guest Jacob Bogage Congressional Economics correspondent. |
| 0:50.0 | So great to see you both. Welcome, Jacob. I don't know how special I am. You are our special correspondent today. |
| 0:56.2 | Our buddies, Rhonda, and James are somewhere listening. |
| 0:58.5 | So shout out to you, friends. |
| 1:00.1 | So Jacob, I'm going to read back to you the lead of your story you filed this weekend with Jeff Stein, |
| 1:04.9 | because to me it reads like a Mission Impossible assignment or something. |
| 1:08.4 | Elon Musk's U.S. Doge Service is seeking access to a heavily |
| 1:11.6 | guarded IRS system that includes detailed financial information about every taxpayer, |
| 1:16.7 | business, and nonprofit in the country. So Jacob, first of all, what are these files? What's in |
| 1:22.6 | this information? It's every, I mean, you could just give, we could go around the table. |
| 1:27.7 | And if you have your tax return, I could just take it from you now. |
| 1:29.9 | I mean, that's what we're talking about. |
| 1:31.4 | We're talking about if you get an IRS tax refund, your bank information, your social |
| 1:38.0 | security number, your personal tax identification number, your household, your dependents, |
| 1:46.8 | and their information, the business you work for, your salary, your payer, I mean, everything financially that makes you, you, that's what |
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