WASHINGTON — A 25-year-old staffer for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative is expected to imminently gain access to the IRS’s sensitive tax database, The Post has confirmed.
Software engineer Gavin Kliger will gain credentials to the system that tracks tax returns and information about individuals as DOGE aggressively slashes spending across the federal bureaucracy.
“Waste, fraud, and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long. It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement first reported by CNN.
“DOGE will continue to shine a light on the fraud they uncover as the American people deserve to know what their government has been spending their hard earned tax dollars on.”
It’s unclear what exactly Kliger will be looking into by using the database — as millions of Americans parepare to submit their annual returns, due by April 15.
The IRS estimates that it reaps significantly less each year than is owed — about $540 billion, or more than a quarter of the annual federal deficit, which Musk hopes to dramatically lower during a blitz through the federal bureaucracy that he says could trim $1 trillion in spending.
It’s possible DOGE will be looking at how much money flows toward Democratic priorities, such as green-energy tax breaks, as well as scrutinizing write-offs that President Trump has asked Congress to repeal in a pending tax bill, including the carried-interest loophole and perks for sports team owners.
Trump wants the elimination of those benefits to finance his campaign vows to eliminate taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits, but currently only rough estimates exist for their cost.
Individual taxpayer information cannot legally be released except under narrowly defined circumstances, such as through a vote of the tax-governing House Ways & Means Committee.
The DOGE involvement in the IRS database could be one of its most sensitive operations to date, as any action to toughen enforcement on ordinary taxpayers almost certainly would spur political backlash.
Republicans, including Trump, fiercely opposed former President Joe Biden’s $80 billion boost in IRS funding in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, arguing it could unleash up to 87,000 new IRS agents on the lives and transactions of middle-class Americans.
Although much of the tax evasion and avoidance that occurs happens among the wealthy, experts say that well-financed individuals are unappealing targets for enforcers because they have the resources to drag out disagreements through legal processes.
Biden himself, for example, allegedly underpaid the feds by up to $500,000 by routing speaking-fee income through what’s known as an “S Corporation” in 2017 and 2018, allowing him to dodge Medicare taxes by lowballing the amount of that income that counted as pay as opposed to business profits.
Former first son Hunter Biden, meanwhile, faced years of criminal investigation for allegedly failing to pay millions in taxes on foreign income and for a range of infractions — including listing a $10,000 sex club membership and a $3,852 Lamborghini rental as business expenses.
Hunter was offered a probation-only plea deal in June 2023 — but only after IRS whistleblowers claimed the almost five-year probe was being slow-walked, allowing some charges to lapse.
After that deal collapsed over Hunter’s demand for even broader immunity for prior conduct, he pleaded guilty again last year to $1.4 million in tax fraud and was later pardoned by his father.
