EXCLUSIVE — Two Republican senators are questioning the ability of the IRS to protect taxpayer information after a government watchdog found it had failed to remove TikTok from all agency devices.
Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), both members of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel on Thursday demanding answers on the alleged noncompliance, including how it might undermine national security.
“Not only has the IRS failed to comply with the law, but its lack of action with regard to implementation of the No TikTok on Government Devices Act has potentially compromised confidential taxpayer information located on devices that have TikTok, which has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and alarming data practices,” the letter states.
The request comes one month after the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Information released a report warning the IRS is “not fully complying” with a federal law passed in December 2022 that bans the popular social app on federal devices.
The agency has taken steps to adhere to that directive. It moved to block access to TikTok on 6,300 mobile devices ahead of the law’s passage. However, the IRS has exempted more than 2,800 devices used by the Criminal Investigations division, the watchdog found, and has yet to inform employees of the ban through its “Bring Your Own Device” policies.
That policy, the IRS said, would be updated by October 2024.
Blackburn and Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, asked the IRS to address the alleged infractions, scrutinizing the BYOD program in particular.
The letter requests written responses from Werfel on how many IRS employees use personal devices for work, what confidential taxpayer information can be accessed on personal devices, and what security protocols are in place to safeguard IRS data.
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TikTok has come under growing congressional scrutiny over its parent company’s ties to the Chinese government. Its CEO, brought before Congress in March of last year, testified that it has never shared the data of its U.S. users with China, but that has done little to assuage the concerns of lawmakers who see the app as a national security threat.
The federal ban only applies to government devices despite a legislative push to remove the app from phones nationwide.
Thune.Blackburn Letter to IRS.pdf by web-producers on Scribd
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