The conflict in Washington over the leaked tax returns of extremely wealthy people like Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos has escalated with billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin suing the IRS and Treasury Department for the “unlawful disclosure” of his tax information.
Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel, accuses the IRS of willfully and intentionally failing to “establish appropriate administrative, technical or physical safeguards” over its record system and of breaching its “legal obligations to safeguard and protect his information from unauthorized disclosure” in a complaint that was submitted on Tuesday to a federal court in the Southern District of Florida.
The allegations derive from Griffin’s involvement in a ProPublica series published in 2021 that looked at the taxes paid by wealthy individuals including Elon Musk and Carl Icahn, some of whom in some years paid no federal income taxes.
It is unknown how the IRS tax data was obtained by ProPublica, which used information provided by an anonymous source.
According to Griffin’s tax returns, he earned an average of $1.7 billion between 2013 and 2018, according to ProPublica. In one ProPublica report, Griffin was highlighted for his $54 million opposition to an Illinois ballot proposition that would have raised his state taxes by more than $50 million annually.
In fact, the ProPublica tax data revealed that Griffin pays a greater effective tax rate than many top earners. Griffin was not listed among the billionaires who paid zero or low tax rates in any one year. It also showed he was the second-largest American taxpayer between 2013 and 2018.
IRS employees deliberately stole the confidential tax returns of several hundred successful American business leaders. It is unacceptable that government officials have failed to thoroughly investigate this unlawful theft of confidential and personal information. Americans expect our government to uphold the laws of our nation when it comes to our private and personal information whether it be tax returns or health care records.
Ken Griffin
In his lawsuit, Griffin said he is “proud of his success and has always sought to pay his fair share of taxes.”
He said that in or after 2019, “IRS personnel exploited the IRS’s willful failure to establish adequate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards for the IRS’s data and records systems to misappropriate confidential tax return information for the highest earning U.S. taxpayers, including Mr. Griffin, and then unlawfully disclosed those materials to ProPublica for publication.”
The IRS and Treasury didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The leaked tax returns sparked an uproar in Washington, which continues to escalate. Republicans claim they are frustrated by the lack of information as the IRS inspector general and Justice Department are looking into the disclosures. However, there have been no conclusions or charges made.
Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee in October sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying “the American people remain in the dark about who was responsible and how the Treasury Department allowed this to happen.” In their resistance to the $80 billion in new IRS funding passed by the Democrats this summer, Republicans have also brought up the leak.
Griffin was the second-largest donor to Republicans in the midterm elections, according to OpenSecrets, spending $60 million on federal elections.
People close to Griffin said he’s taking on the IRS to protect Americans’ privacy and to make sure similar leaks don’t happen to others in the future.
“IRS employees deliberately stole the confidential tax returns of several hundred successful American business leaders,” Griffin said in a statement. “It is unacceptable that government officials have failed to thoroughly investigate this unlawful theft of confidential and personal information. Americans expect our government to uphold the laws of our nation when it comes to our private and personal information whether it be tax returns or health care records.”
