IRS accidentally publishes personal information about 120,000 taxpayers on its website

The Internal Revenue Service announced this week that it had briefly published personal tax information of about 120,000 taxpayers before the agency realized its error and deleted the information from its website.

In what the IRS is calling a human coding error that occurred sometime last year, the agency accidentally published tax exemption forms completed by 120,000 filers.

The Form 990-T, which is an Exempt Organization Business Income Tax Return, is used by charities to file tax exemptions but is also often required of filers with Individual Retirement Plans. The information from charities is open to the public, but the IRA-specific forms are meant to stay confidential.

The IRS released a statement on Friday regarding the incident, saying it had taken immediate action to remedy the information breach.

“The files have been removed from IRS.gov and will be replaced with updated files in the near future,” the statement reads. “In addition, the IRS also will be working with groups that routinely use the files to remove the erroneous files and replace them with the correct versions as they become available. The IRS will contact all impacted filers in the coming weeks.”

The IRS explained the data that was shared did not include certain individual identifiers, but had revealed other types of information.

“The data does not include Social Security numbers, detailed account-holder information or individual income tax returns (Forms 1040),” the IRS said. “In some instances, the data does include individual names or business contact information.”

The agency says it is continuing to look into the situation.