Death and taxes. And marketing. And telemarketing

DallasBlog.com | Trey Garrison:

“And now the IRS is quietly moving to loosen the once-inviolable privacy of federal income-tax returns, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The report says that if the IRS succeeds, accountants and other tax-return preparers will be able to sell information from individual returns - or even entire returns - to marketers and data brokers. It's like they're not even bothering to pretend anymore.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

According to the Inquirer story, "The proposed rules would require a tax preparer to obtain written consent before selling tax information." If the taxpayer and H&R Block agree on some business exchange (tax preparation in exchange for money, perhaps with a discount for information sharing), why should the government tell the taxpayer, with force of law, what they can and can't do with their own financial information?