IRS Commissioner Leaving Agency After Agreement With DHS on Illegal Immigrant Data

The acting commissioner of the IRS is departing the agency, officials said hours after it reached an agreement with Homeland Security officials to share data on illegal immigrants.

Acting Commissioner Melanie Krause will no longer be with the IRS, a spokesperson for the Treasury Department, the parent agency of the IRS, said.

“Melanie Krause has been leading the IRS through a time of extraordinary change,” the spokesperson told news outlets in a statement. “We wish Melanie well on her next endeavor,” the spokesperson added later.

The spokesperson also said, “As we focus on IT modernization and re-organize the agency to better serve the taxpayer, we are also in the midst of breaking down data silos that for too long have stood in the way of identifying waste, fraud, and abuse and bringing criminals to justice.”

Krause joined the IRS in 2021 after seven years with the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General. She was serving as the agency’s chief operating officer when she was promoted in February to acting commissioner, following the retirement of Doug O’Donnell. O’Donnell had previously taken over as acting commissioner after Commissioner Danny Werfel stepped down shortly before President Donald Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20.

Krause and the IRS did not return requests for comment.

The IRS and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently reached an agreement that gives DHS the ability to request tax return information for people under criminal investigation, according to a court filing. If DHS requests the information, “the IRS must provide it,” government lawyers said.

“Information sharing across agencies is essential to identify who is in our country, including violent criminals, determine what public safety and terror threats may exist so we can neutralize them, scrub these individuals from voter rolls, as well as identify what public benefits these aliens are using at the American taxpayer expense,” a DHS spokesperson told The Epoch Times.