The New York Times assures us that the source of the Trump tax returns had them legally, and, since they are always truthful, I am not sure why we should doubt this. In my mind, this assertion would preclude an IRS employee as the leaker, because an IRS employee who possessed the returns for non-IRS businesses (like leaking to the New York Times) would be in violation of the law (one applicable law here is the amazingly named “Taxpayer Browsing Protection Act of 1997”, which is now in the Internal Revenue Code as Section 7213A—you may have not previously known the Internal Revenue Code protects you, as a taxpayer, from being “browsed”). But, while data security is a huge priority at the IRS, the IRS certainly is not flawless when it comes to data security. No one is, or really can be. What if someone at the IRS did leak?
It would be bad for the person who leaked. One interesting thing I learned as I read Section 7431, which also deals with the results of unauthorized data access, is that the taxpayer may receive damages of at least “$1,000 for each act of unauthorized inspection or disclosure of a return or return information with respect to which such defendant is found liable.” How much money could that be? $1,000?
It depends on what a “disclosure” is? I am not sure we have the final word on that. What if each newspaper printed and website accessed is a disclosure? I would try to make that case if I were an attorney looking for damages. Let’s say that 5,000,000 people directly saw the article, then the leaker could be looking at a serious penalty: 5,000,000*$1,000=$5,000,000,000, although, maybe they would only pay for the single disclosure to the New York Times, and the Times would be on the hook for the rest. There is some precedent in this area, but, in a high profile case like this, I would expect attorneys to try to set new precedent, especially as they have a court system that has been filled by the plaintiff himself.
However, let’s say the monetary damages per disclosure is not large. Even in that case, the law also provides damages of “the actual damages sustained by the plaintiff as a result of such unauthorized inspection or disclosure.” It is, of course, impossible to know if any one issue would tip the presidential race, but, if it did, it would be interesting to see how much the presidency could be claimed to be worth, especially when Trump himself has claimed that the Presidency has had a negative net impact on his financial situation.
This is, of course, all speculation. But, to me, interesting speculation. We shall certainly be hearing more about this, as there have been calls for a deep investigation into the leak.
