U.S. Patent Office Routinely Discloses Confidential Taxpayer Data

Warren Rojas (Investigative Reporter, Tax Analysts) has published Patent Office Rules Allow Simple Access to Tax, Financial Data, 108 Tax Notes 1079 (Sept. 5, 2005), also available on the Tax Analysts web site as Doc 2005-18195, 2005 TNT 171-1.  Here is the opening:

In a practice that brings up serious personal privacy issues, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) routinely makes available to the public tax returns and other personal information about inventors, an investigation by Tax Analysts has revealed.

Few inventors are aware that their tax and financial records, which they are often required to submit to the USPTO if they fall behind on their patent maintenance fees, are available for public inspection.

During recent trips to the USPTO file information unit in Crystal City, Va., Tax Analysts retrieved more than a dozen patent files on inventors from across the country that contain individual and joint federal tax returns, wage and withholding reports, monthly bank statements, Social Security Administration benefit statements, credit reports, and mortgage foreclosure warnings. Included in those documents are names, Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, home addresses, income data, mortgage histories, and student identification numbers.

IRS and Treasury officials maintain that information obtained by other government agencies -- in this case, taxpayer-furnished data sent to the USPTO in return for commercial protection -- is exempt from the stringent antidisclosure provisions in section 6103 of the tax code. "There are significant privacy concerns, but they don't have anything to do with [section] 6103," a Treasury counsel said. Other tax officials remained baffled by the disclosure issue, questioning whether the USPTO policies run counter to the Privacy Act of 1974 (P.L. 93-579), section 6103, or both.