Government Efficiency (DOGE) Elon Musk, Fox News will have immediate access to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) system, which includes sensitive taxpayer information.
Doge requires access to IRS Integrated Data Retrieval System, This allows IRS workers to view their taxpayer accounts.
White House Deputy Press Secretary, White House Principal, Harrison Fields, told Fox News in a statement that access to the system is necessary to identify fraud and fix the system.
“Notice, fraud, and abuse have long been deeply rooted in broken systems,” Fields said. “To identify and fix it, you have direct access to the system. Doge deserves to know what Americans have spent their hard-earned taxes, so they're revealing. We will continue to shed light on fraud.”
Elon Musk and President Donald Trump will talk about Doge's efforts to investigate wasteful US government spending from the White House oval office in Washington, DC on February 11, 2025. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
The IRS website says the system allows workers to “have instantaneous visual access to certain taxpayer accounts.” Other features of the system include “Requesting Account Information and Requesting Returns”, entering transactions and collection information, and “Automatically generating notifications, collected documents and other outputs.”
Musk-Led Doge has immediate access to an IRS system that includes sensitive taxpayer information, Fox News learned Monday. (Getty Images, Samuel Corum/Bloomberg via file)
Musk is leading Doge to actively reduce government waste when it comes to federal spending under President Donald Trump. This was created by an executive order and is a temporary organization within the White House, and will spend 18 months carrying out its mission.
Doge places Dei in the chopping block with more than $370 million in education grants
The group has faced criticism of access to federal systems, including the Treasury payment system, which has led to cancel federal contracts and cutting across various agencies. The attorney general of 14 states is suing Doge to block access to federal data, claiming Musk and the Trump administration are engaged in an outline of illegal administration.
Click to get the Fox News app
The newly formed cost-cutting agency won the victory Friday when a federal judge in Washington rejected a request to temporarily block access to sensitive data from the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services and the Consumer Financial Protection Agency .
Michael Dorgan and Eric Revell of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.
