A new government study gave the Internal Revenue Service high marks for protecting the privacy of individual tax records it compiles and shares with 37 federal agencies, including the U.S. Postal Service and 315 state and local agencies.
Although the study, prepared by the General Accounting Office for the Joint House and Senate Committee on Taxation, suggested taxpayer information is routinely shared with the USPS, a postal service spokesman indicated otherwise.
“The only way we get that information is by federal court order in connection with a criminal investigation,” said Bob Bissell, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. “Once we get that information, it’s kept under lock and key and after the investigation is over the information is either returned to the IRS or destroyed.”
That’s the only time anyone from the USPS obtains private taxpayer information from the IRS he said noting that the information cannot be used for any other purpose such as enhancing the postal service’s national databases of postal customer names and addresses.
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