Elon Musk’s DOGE aims to hack the IRS and create a single API for easy access to U.S. taxpayer data – News

Operatives from Elon Musk’s government cost-cutting team, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, are planning a “hackathon” event, inviting engineers to build a “mega API” that would ensure it has easy access to date from the Internal Revenue Service.

According to Wired, DOGE intends to create an application programming interface that would enable IRS data from disparate systems to be moved into a single cloud-hosted platform, which will act as a new “read center” of the agency’s data.

As part of the plan, DOGE is inviting “dozens” of IRS engineers to attend an event in Washington D.C., where they’ll collaborate to build the API, Wired reported, citing two anonymous sources. The initiative also reportedly involves Palantir Technologies Inc., a big data analytics software provider co-founded by longtime Musk ally Peter Thiel that helps law enforcement agencies with surveillance work.

DOGE wants the API to be built within just 30 days, but according to one IRS employee who spoke to Wired, that deadline is “not technically possible” and would likely “cripple” the IRS’s systems.

According to Wired, two leading DOGE operatives are orchestrating the hackathon. They include the healthcare technology executive Sam Corcos and a 25-year-old software engineer called Gavin Kliger, who previously attended the University of California at Berkeley until 2020 and later worked at Databricks Inc. He reportedly joined DOGE as a special adviser to the director at the Office of Personnel Management. As for Corcos, he is said to be a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Wired cites its sources as saying that Corcos wants the IRS to pause all of its ongoing engineering work and cancel efforts to modernize its existing computer systems.

On March 1, The Washington Post reported that Corcos had personally intervened, ordering the IRS to remove restrictions it had placed on Kliger’s access to its systems, and shortly after proposed an agreement that would enable IRS data to be shared across multiple government agencies.

However, a March 14 letter from Senator Ron Wyden to the IRS and others suggests that this request was declined. In the letter, Wyden praised the “rightful rejection” of Corcos’ request, and goes on to cite a second Post story that claims Trump administration officials are trying to access IRS data to aid in their immigration crackdown, as well as their government efficiency efforts.

With regards to the hackathon, Corcos is believed to be intent on creating “one API to rule them all,” and ensure that IRS data can be easily accessed via cloud platforms, Wired reported.

APIs are software that enables applications to exchange data easily, and they could be used to move the IRS’s data from legacy servers into a unified cloud platform, where it would be more easily accessible to DOGE and other Trump officials.

The API would first be applied to the IRS’ mainframes, and would later be expanded to its other internal systems, which are spread across dozens of on-premises data centers and compartmentalized cloud environments. At present, access to these systems is highly restricted, and IRS workers are only given permission to do so on a “need-to-know” basis.

The plan would ultimately touch all data within the IRS, including the names, addresses and social security numbers of U.S. taxpayers, plus their employment and tax return information.

Whether or not DOGE’s proposed API is feasible remains to be seen. One source told Wired that the process of schematizing the IRS data would likely “take years.” Moreover, the source added that “these people have no experience, not only in government, but in the IRS or with taxes or anything else.”

Still, the lack of experience and the existence of controversy doesn’t appear to have stopped DOGE so far. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, its workers have slowly been winding their way into the computer systems of numerous federal agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission, the Social Security Administration and, most recently, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services division.

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