IRS Security Breach Leaves 'All' Americans 'Vulnerable'

A Tuesday report exposing what the richest Americans pay — or don’t pay — in taxes also appears to reveal significant IRS security breakdowns that potentially puts every taxpayer’s most sensitive information in play, experts say.

ProPublica’s report focused on a detailed accounting of how the world’s wealthiest individuals — multibillionaires such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk — routinely pay little to no federal income tax. The outlet didn’t divulge how it gained access to "a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation's wealthiest people." But experts say there’s only a few ways to obtain such confidential documents and that the trove was even able to leak has startling implications for every taxpayer nationwide, from the poverty-stricken to the prosperous.