Recently, the Markup discovered that various tax filing websites, including TaxAct, TaxSlayer, and H&R Block, were sending user financial information to Facebook, which is owned by Meta Platforms. The leak occurred through the filing websites’ use of a piece of code called Meta Pixel. It is a snippet of JavaScript code that collects information about a visitor and transfers it to Meta, ostensibly to provide analytic data back to the website owner. Generally, it’s limited to things such as a visitor’s geographic location and time spent on the page. But optional payloads can also be attached, and it seems the tax filing websites were neatly packing up sensitive financial information and e-shipping it off to Facebook….

As our data is “out there” in more places, and more entities become chiefly data brokers, a significant subset of what amounts to private financial information about a given taxpayer can be collected, cross-referenced, analyzed, and reconstituted using various means, including artificial intelligence. Treas. Reg. 301-7216 doesn’t permit the aggregate sale of taxpayer data, but it is silent as to aggregating data about an individual taxpayer and connecting it with data from other sources.

Read more:

Leahey, A. (2022, December 13). Facebook Leak Just One Reason Taxpayer Data Sharing Must Stop. Bloomberg Tax. https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/facebook-leak-just-one-reason-taxpayer-data-sharing-must-stop