Or so this claims:

If this is true, it is time for firing of some bigshots in the IRS.

Is Your Personal Tax Information for Sale?

In a move that threatens the privacy of federal income-tax returns, the Internal Revenue Service is proposing that accountants and other tax-return preparers can sell information from returns to marketers and data brokers.

The change in IRS policy was included in a set of proposed rules that the Treasury Department and the IRS published in the December 8 Federal Register.

IRS officials portray the changes as "housecleaning measures needed to update outmoded regulations adopted before it began accepting returns electronically," the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

IRS rules currently prohibit tax preparers from selling returns to third parties for marketing purposes.

The proposed rule change would allow a tax preparer to sell information – or even an entire return – by obtaining written consent from a client.

Critics say the requirement for signed consent would prove meaningless for many taxpayers who might unwittingly sign a consent form while reviewing stacks of documents before a filing deadline.

"The normal interaction is that the taxpayer just signs what the tax preparer puts in front of them," said Jean Ann Fox of the Consumer Federation of America, one of several groups fighting the changes. "They think, ‘This person is a tax professional, and I'm going to rely on them.'"

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill, sent a letter last week to IRS Commissioner Mark Everson warning that once tax information is in the hands of third parties, it could be resold – increasing consumers' vulnerability to identity theft and other risks, according to the Inquirer.

"There is no more sensitive information than a taxpayer's return," Obama wrote, "and the IRS's proposal to allow these returns to be sold to third-party marketers and database brokers is deeply troubling."