Senator Lankford Opposes Resolution to Roll Back Critical Privacy Protections for Taxpayers

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today opposed a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that would continue to burden taxpayers and non-profit organizations with meaningless paperwork. 

“The IRS should not require or keep data they do not need, especially from non-profit organizations,” said Lankford. “The Treasury’s actions are intended to protect private, personal information to ensure the data security of citizens who are engaged in non-profit work. As Americans, we are rightly skeptical when private businesses keep and store our information; the federal government even more so. The law has always required that this data remains private.”

Individuals are required to keep records of their nonprofit contributions on hand in the event of an IRS audit. With this Treasury rule, tax-exempt organizations are subject to the same ‘keep in case you get audited’ requirement.

Prior to Treasury’s July policy change, the IRS required an organization to list all contributors in their tax filing, and then publicly release the same filing with redactions to protect donors from being exposed to the public, but this information has been leaked by IRS employees in the past. Under the new policy change, organizations must still keep track of all contributors who gave at least $5,000 and must make that information available to the IRS upon request.  The rule requires the new version the IRS receives to match the redacted version released under the previous rules prior to July. 

The CRA permits Congress to overturn an agency rule with a simple majority vote within 60 legislative days after an agency has submitted the rule to Congress. For the resolution to take effect, it must pass both the Senate and House and be signed into law by the President. 

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