Tax prep companies including H&R Block and TaxSlayer found to be tracking users, share...

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Facepalm: US lawmakers are accusing tax companies, Google, and Meta of abusing taxpayers' data through the use of invisible tracking technology. The companies have shared highly sensitive information for years, an act that appears to necessitate direct intervention by federal agencies and the US government itself.

Seven US Democratic lawmakers led by Elizabeth Warren recently unveiled the results of a seven-month-long investigation into the data sharing practices of tax preparation companies. The six Senators (plus Representative Katie Porter) released a 54-page report, which highlights what the politicians perceive as an "outrageous, extensive, and potentially illegal sharing" of taxpayers' sensitive personal and financial information with Big Tech corporations.

The report describes how tax preparation companies TaxAct, TaxSlayer, and H&R Block confirmed that they used tracking pixel technology, now known as a "Web beacon," provided by Meta (Meta pixel) for "at least" a few years. These companies have also used Google Analytics (GA) tracking technology for an even longer period.

According to the report, these tax preparation companies have shared the data of millions of US taxpayers with Facebook and Google, providing two of the world's leading advertising corporations with "extraordinarily sensitive" personal and financial information. Meta, Google and the tax companies claimed that data sharing was an anonymous process, yet experts have revealed that such data could be used to "easily" identify individuals or to create "dossiers" useful for targeted advertising and other purposes.

The lawmakers suggest that these companies were indeed "reckless" with their data sharing practices, likely installing tracking tools on their websites without fully understanding their implications. Those corporations may have "violated taxpayer privacy laws by sharing taxpayer data with Big Tech firms," the report states, and they need to be fully investigated by "relevant enforcement entities" including the IRS, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and even the Department of Justice (DOJ).

"Spy pixels" – or web beacons – are an advertising-focused technology which has been used since the late 1990s, when privacy experts first discovered the stealthy profiling programs employed by websites and internet companies. The technology is still popular today, even though users have now more tools designed to counteract invisible tracking and invasive advertising.

As for the charges brought by the newly published report, a Meta spokesman stated that the company's policies on advertising are very clear and transmitting sensitive information about people is against the rules. Meta further remarked that its system is designed to filter out any "potentially sensitive data" that it can detect. Google also said that Google Analytics includes "strict policies and technical features" prohibiting customers from collecting profiling data.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/99399-tax-preparation-companies-tracked-users-shared-sensitive-data.html

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Ending the income tax would solve this problem.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Ending the income tax would solve this problem.

It should have ended after the war years. Either that, or nothing else should be taxed.

 

[wiyosaya]

WTF?? IMO, this kind of data sharing needs to be made illegal in the US even if it is "anonymous."

If you are an advertiser and you want this kind of data because you think it is going to help you "sell" me on some crap you have to offer, think again. I don't pay ANY attention to advertising. If I want to buy something, I research it very well before hand and only then will I make a decision. I was in sales at one point, and I know most of the BS tricks that I, as a sales person, was supposed to use. These days, I see that all of those tricks remain unchanged. When someone tries to use them on me, they have no effect.

 

[wiyosaya]

Ending the income tax would solve this problem.

I have to disagree. If it were not data associated with taxes, it would be something else that would be sold in its place. Advertisers drool over any data that they can get their hands on because they think it will help them sell their crap to everyone. What they fail to realize is that many forms of advertising do not work. There have been studies that have shown as much.

 

[Uncle Al]

Another federal offense our Congress will never do anything about ......

 

[brucek]

From the report:

Under the law, "a tax return preparer may not disclose or use a taxpayer's tax return information prior to obtaining a written consent from the taxpayer," -- and they failed to do so... Violating the law can result in criminal penalties of up to $1,000 per instance and up to a year in prison.

"We also welcome the recent IRS announcement of a free, direct file pilot next year, which will give taxpayers the option to file taxes without sharing their data with untrustworthy and incompetent tax preparation firms"

I like where they are headed with this.

In addition to their problems with federal law, these companies may now also have issues with various state laws and the licensing authorities that allow the firms and the accountants to practice.

 

[wiyosaya]

From the report:





I like where they are headed with this.

In addition to their problems with federal law, these companies may now also have issues with various state laws and the licensing authorities that allow the firms and the accountants to practice.

I agree that the ability to file your own taxes on line without the need of a tax firm is a great idea, and that the other items you cite are headed in the right direction.

I wonder, though, how many people will e-file their own returns especially if the complexity of filing a tax return remains high. I would not doubt that many people use tax preparers only because of the complexity of filing tax returns.

 

[brucek]

I wonder, though, how many people will e-file their own returns especially if the complexity of filing a tax return remains high. I would not doubt that many people use tax preparers only because of the complexity of filing tax returns.

I see at least two different types of complexity:

One is actual accounting complexity, where judgment calls requiring expertise have to be made in order to turn the raw numbers on say a bank statement into different adjusted numbers that go on a tax form. People will probably still need an accountant for this. The current tax packages can't do these things automatically either.

But the other is simply tax form complexity, where you have all the numbers on your W-2 statement, your 1099 statement, etc., but you just don't know where to put them on a tax form and how to mathematically operate on those numbers to turn them into an amount due. This is what the current consumer tax packages do well.

An IRS managed service could probably do that part even better, since for a lot of those statements, the IRS was ALREADY COPIED on the original statement anyway. If you were a typical filer with a regular job and maybe a bank or investment account or two, you could just go the IRS, confirm that's your job and your account, answer just some basic questions about your circumstances, and viola it would be right.

 

[human7]

Ending the income tax would solve this problem.

At the very least, ending the income tax return industry would. There's no reason that taxes have to be complicated, except for the political reasons of changing tax rates to promote/discourage certain things. There's better ways to do that than filling out dozens of forms every year.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

It should have ended after the war years. Either that, or nothing else should be taxed.

There is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.