Lawmakers seek answers from H&R Block, Intuit, Meta, Google on data sharing
Margarita-Young

A group of Congressional Democrats sent letters on Wednesday to H&R Block (NYSE:HRB), TaxAct, and TaxSlayer and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) asking about the data the tax preparation companies share with the tech giants.
The letters were sent by U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden and Representatives Katie Porter and Brad Sherman. The Markup had reported that H&R Block (HRB), TaxAct, and TaxSlayer had been transmitting taxpayer data to Meta (META) via a widely used code called Meta Pixel, the legislators said.
The code "reportedly gathered and transmitted highly sensitive taxpayer data without customersâ explicit permission, including names, email addresses, income figures, filing status, refund amounts, health savings account usage, and more. At least one tax preparation company reportedly sent sensitive financial data to Google as well," the lawmakers said.
They asked the companies to provide answers to explain the nature and extent of the alleged sharing of taxpayer data by Jan. 3, 2023. The group of lawmakers also sent a letter to Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU) seeking a full accounting of taxpayer data disclosure from the major tax prep companies.
In late Wednesday trading, H&R Block (HRB) stock rose 0.2%, Intuit (INTU) dropped 1.9%, Meta (META) gained 1.3%, and Google (GOOG) Class C shares slipped 0.5%.
In November, Facebook was hit with a â¬265M fine from Ireland's data privacy regulator Monday over data made available that had been scraped from the site from 2018-2019.
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