Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, responded to an investigation revealing tactics the super wealthy use to evade income taxes by asking the Government Accountability Office to report on how the Internal Revenue Service protects filers’ information.

“Recent news reported on tax return information and stated that the news organization had a large amount of IRS tax data on certain types of taxpayers. In light of this, you asked us to review IRS’s policies for protecting tax information,” reads the May 19 watchdog report titled “Characteristics of Employee Unauthorized Access and Disclosure Cases.” GAO identified Crapo as the congressional requester.

The news report referenced in GAO’s footnotes is an expose ProPublica published last summer using tax information from individuals like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg to highlight patterns—including a “buy, borrow, die” strategy—that allows those with sufficient means to enjoy an affluent lifestyle while sometimes paying no federal income taxes at all.

ProPublica said it received the confidential information through a channel it set up for whistleblowers to anonymously share information and that the source—who is unknown to them—said they were motivated by reporting the outlet has done on how a lack of resources at the agency is causing the IRS to focus more on auditing the poor than the exceptionally rich.

But “whistleblower” is a loaded term and the statutes offering protection to those...

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