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I stepped out of lunch with a source on Friday, popped into the driver’s seat of my car and flipped out my phone to check what I’d missed.
Tulsi Gabbard quit (or was forced out) as President Trump’s director of national intelligence. The news was already on the wires.
And then a message from a source: The IRS was considering adding a citizenship question to tax forms. After a couple phone calls, I was able to confirm the tip, and Reuters broke the story about how tax officials are looking for new ways to be part of Trump’s “mass deportation” and “anti-fraud” campaigns.
(Do you have a news tip? Text me via the encrypted messaging app Signal.)
To set the table stakes, let’s recall:
The IRS spent much of 2025 trying to work with immigration enforcement officials to share taxpayer’s confidential personal information. ICE wanted to use that data to locate, detain and deport suspected undocumented immigrants.
I broke the news of this arrangement with colleague Jeff Stein when we were both at The Washington Post.
Federal courts have found the IRS-DHS arrangement to be unlawful. But before that ruling came down, the two agencies went about passing paper anyway — and they totally screwed it up (as many, many experts warned would inevitably happen).
IRS shared information on more than 42,000 of the “wrong” people, and the system the two agencies used to identify and vet the “right” people was fatally flawed from the beginning, a federal judge wrote.
So what could the IRS possibly want with a citizenship question on the Form 1040, the foundational paperwork for reporting earnings and claiming tax benefits?
Let’s start here: It’s totally above board for the IRS to ask this question for internal research purposes. But doing anything with that citizenship data likely violates taxpayers’ rights.
If a federal judge ruled that it was illegal for the IRS to share information as basic as taxpayers’ names and addresses, it’s fair to think that sharing citizenship status would also be unlawful.
Beyond that, the IRS also has a pretty good way of determining citizenship status already. Citizens can file taxes using their Social Security numbers. Many non-citizens don’t have an SSN, but they still pay taxes (a lot of taxes), and they use an “individual taxpayer identification number” instead.
ITIN use isn’t a foolproof way of determining citizenship status, but it’s a solid indicator, and, sources tell me, likely enough for the IRS to use as a proxy for internal research purposes — likely the only kosher way of using that data.
Trump, in theory, cares a lot about this. Exhibit A:
Trump recently dropped a lawsuit against the IRS seeking $10 billion in damages after a tax agency contractor leaked his tax returns to media outlets. The contractor, Charles Littlejohn, is serving a five-year prison sentence.
In exchange for dropping the suit, the Justice Department created a nearly $1.8 billion fund to pay supposed victims of "government weaponization." As part of the settlement, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an agreement permanently barring the IRS from pursuing tax claims against Trump, his family or his businesses.
This isn’t the first thing the Trump administration has considered to draw citizenship information out of tax filings.
Pal Andrew Duehren of the New York Times reported that the IRS was considering differentiating ITIN codes to denote a filer's immigration status. I’ve also been able to confirm Andy’s scoop.
(Andy has also been the best reporter in the country reporting on the “government weaponization” fund and Trump-IRS settlement. Worth giving him a follow on social media.)
One more thing:
I’m joining Reuters’ U.S. politics newsletter with White House team colleague Trevor Hunnicutt.
It comes out weekly on Thursdays. It’s free. We’re gonna have some fun. Subscribe here.
As always, I want to hear from you. Drop me a line via email: [email protected]. Contact me securely on Signal at jacobbogage.87. And follow me on Bluesky (@jacobbogage.bsky.social) and LinkedIn.
