Privacy and Public Disclosure
Tax return laws generally prohibit disclosure of any information gathered on a state tax return. Likewise, the federal government may not (with certain exceptions) disclose tax return information without the filer's permission, and each federal agency is also limited in how it can share such information with other federal agencies.
Occasionally there have been efforts in Congress to require tax returns to be open to public inspection. For example, Senators Robert M. La Follette and George W. Norris supported such legislation, applicable to both individual and corporate returns, and public disclosure for wealthy taxpayers was required from 1923-1926. Presidential candidates have sometimes voluntarily released their tax returns.
Read more about this topic: Tax Return (United States)
Famous quotes containing the words privacy and/or public:
“You may well ask how I expect to assert my privacy by resorting to the outrageous publicity of being one’s actual self on paper. There’s a possibility of it working if one chooses the terms, to wit: outshouting image-gimmick America through a quietly desperate search for self.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“... the Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)