Identification and preparatory tax companies “recklessly” exchanging taxpayers, according to the Congress report

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Update, November 1: Chairman of the Federal Trade Committee, Lina Khan Writing To the report led by Senator Elizabeth Warren and the investigation of his sign of the use of the Meta Pixel tax preparation companies. Khan’s letter was approved by Warren to obtain experimental measures to take the Federal Trade Committee and said: “In response to general reports on this issue,” FTC recently warned The companies concerned that they may face financial penalties to abuse tax data. The message also highlighted the relevant FTC work on web tracking, including sensitive medical information – an issue that has also been investigated. “We still look closely in this important field,” Khan wrote.

The major tax preparation companies and the main companies have shared millions of financial statements for taxpayers for years, according to a report in Congress issued the day, which was accompanied by a coding article.

Our investigation, which was published in November, revealed how to transfer tax deposit services including H & R Block, Taxact and Daxlayer data to the parent company on Facebook, Meta, through a tool called Meta Pixel. The data was sent when taxpayers provided their taxes and included personal information such as the first and last names, income, deposit state and recovery amounts. Some data were also sent to Google through their analyzes, and Google was also a topic to investigate Congress.

Today’s report was informed of legislators through interviews with Meta and Google representatives and major tax preparatory services. He was martyred and confirmed the coding report and reduced tax companies for being “indifferently shocked by their treatment of taxpayers’ data” and technology companies to act “with amazing ignorance of the privacy of the taxpayer.”

The report decided that the tax preparatory companies have installed the Meta and Google tracking tools on their services without a complete understanding of how to collect and use tax data, and that companies “are still completely unaware of the current situation of millions of taxpayers data.”

Tax data is tightly organized, with sanctions on improper participation, including fines and prison time. The report found that the companies concerned probably did not obtain appropriate approval to share data and may face criminal penalties.

The legislators presented the report today to many federal enforcement agencies and asked them in a letter of investigation and trial of any company or individual breaking the law. The agencies include internal revenue service, the General Treasury Inspector for Tax Management, the Ministry of Justice, and the Federal Trade Committee.

Meta, H & R Block and Taxlayer did not immediately respond to the suspension requests. “The company has” strict policies and technical features “to prevent Google Analytics from collecting sensitive data and that it is the responsibility of website owners to the information police they collect.

Dermot Halpin, CEO of Taxact, said in a statement he sent via e -mail after publishing that the company cooperated with Warren staff and commented “Standard Analysis Tools” to assess concerns. He said, “The protection of the rights and privacy of our customers is our top priority, and we are committed to communicating with stakeholders to address any concerns and help in progress in public policy.”

The government enforcement agencies to which the message was sent did not respond to a request for comment, except for FTC, who refused to comment.

The investigation was led by Senator in Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren and signed by Senchur Ron Widen from Oregon, Richard Blumentel from Connecticut, Tami Dakrith from Illinois, Bernie Sanders from Vermont, Chaldon Whitech from Rod Island, as well as California Katie representative. They are all Democrats except Sanders, who is independent.

Meta Pixel is a part of the widely used tracking code that companies and institutions can place on their sites to better target ads on Facebook. When web users visit a web with pixels, the tool can register information about the visit and send it to Facebook, and companies can then use this information to customize ads. The company may put pixels on their exit page to announce new products for former customers on Facebook, for example.

But while the code is used on millions of sites around the web, Meta warns of using it to collect potential sensitive information, such as financial and health data. However, as part of a project called Pixel Hunt, signs have found many cases where sensitive data was sent over and over to Meta, including major hospitals and remote health care companies and the US Department of Education.

Meta claims that it has automatic mechanisms to filter sensitive data, but the report of legislators claims that these guarantees are “sadly sufficient” and it seems only present to provide a “set of deprivation”. According to the report, Meta told Congress that she had sent notifications to tax preparatory companies about data after she requested coding before publishing, but tax preparatory companies said they had never received these notifications.

The tax preparatory companies also contacted Meta several times after publishing the coding article to learn about the final status of their customers’ data, according to the report, but they moved away without a satisfactory answer.

In one case, according to the Laxlayer comments submitted to the legislators, the representative of the descriptive ads specifically advised using a feature to collect data on the pages that web visitors see. I was not aware of the amount of data to be collected.

Unlike many other countries, the United States does not have the option to provide free tax on a large scale managed by the government itself, forcing many taxpayers mainly to bypass tax preparation companies. The report urges the Tax Authority to change this, and concluded that “the investigation raises serious doubts about the ability of the tax preparation industry to protect taxpayers information and highlight the urgent need for the tax department to develop the online tax deposit system – to protect the privacy of taxpayers and provide a better alternative to taxpayers to provide their returns.”