As we just heard, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency Group is seeking access to data systems within the Internal Revenue Service

that house personal information, detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the country.

According to the Washington Post, the IRS is considering a memorandum of understanding that would give Doge staff members

broad access to its systems, and that is raising concern about how the sensitive information is

accessed and how it might be used. For more on the risks and implications, we turn now to

Natasha Sorin, professor at Yale Law School, and a former tax policy advisor at the Treasury Department.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me.

So I want to draw on your experience at Treasury.

Help us understand what systems and what specific information these Doge staff members could potentially access.

So what we're talking about here is something called the Integrated retrieval system or IDRS. And what that data system is, is for IRS

employees, it's almost like an index of tax histories. It is every single person, every

single business in this country, their history with the agency. So think about all

the information that must be entailed in IDRS. It is social security numbers. It is personal

bank account information. It is your tax history. So how much you made and the ways in which

you accrued income. And all of that information is available to the

IRS because, for example, if during filing season a taxpayer calls and asks the agency a question

about a particular balance due or a notice they've received, it's really easy for the IRS's

customer service representative to pull up on the system and understand exactly what they should be

telling that taxpayer. But this data is incredibly safeguarded within the agency. It is only

accessible to people who have a specific reason for needing access to it. They're going to

interact with taxpayers and they need to be able to answer their questions. I worked at the

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