Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

5. Department of Homeland Security · Notable

Equalize taxes on visa holders and give DHS illegal aliens' tax data

Partially done

167 5. Department of Homeland Security

“Department of the Treasury: Implement all necessary regulations both to equalize taxes between American citizens and working visa holders and to provide DHS with all tax information of illegal aliens as expeditiously as possible.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The instrument exists, it is bounded, and it is under injunction. On 2025-04-07 DHS and the IRS **executed a Memorandum of Understanding** to "establish the procedures and requirements for ICE's submission of valid . . . § 6103(i)(2) requests for addresses of persons subject to criminal investigation under 8 U.S.C. § 1253(a)(1)". Under it the IRS receives ICE's requests, reviews each for completeness and validity and returns any that do not meet the statute's requirements, searches for the last known address of each named individual and provides it. The MOU provided that no exchange would begin until a separate implementation agreement was signed; that was finalized on 2025-04-18. So a mechanism transferring return information to DHS is in place — the second half of the Quote, in part. **The boundary is real and is the reason this is not `done`.** The MOU covers *addresses only*, for individuals already the subject of a criminal investigation, on a validated request; the Quote asks for "all tax information of illegal aliens as expeditiously as possible". And the mechanism is currently constrained: in *Center for Taxpayer Rights v. IRS* the district court on 2025-11-21 **stayed** the IRS's Address-Sharing Policy under 5 U.S.C. § 705 and **preliminarily enjoined** Treasury and the IRS from disclosing return information to DHS under § 6103(i)(2) "except in strict compliance with the requirements of that Section", with a 48-hour notice-to-court obligation for every future DHS request; the government's appeal (D.C. Cir. 26-5006, noticed 2026-01-06) carries no stay, so that injunction is in force. Narrow compliant disclosure remains permitted, which is why the item is leveled at `partial` rather than `blocked`. The first half of the Quote — equalizing taxes between citizens and working visa holders — still has no instrument at all: no Treasury or IRS regulation proposing or making that change was found, and the negative search below stands unchanged.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Moved from not started to partial on 2026-09-03; the earlier entry was replaced.

The earlier Federal Register negative was correct and is not refuted — it was bounding the wrong thing. A § 6103 memorandum of understanding between two agencies never enters the Federal Register: it is an interagency agreement, published nowhere, and it surfaced only because somebody sued over it. A § 501(a) Jones Act waiver has the same shape: some instruments never enter the Federal Register. Where a Quote names an instrument of that kind, the record that would carry it is a litigation docket, a report to Congress or an IG report — not the FR.

How it was read. Through the appeals court: the D.C. Circuit’s published opinion in Centro de Trabajadores Unidos v. Bessent can be read at media.cadc.uscourts.gov and quotes the MOU and its Joint Appendix page directly, which is Primary evidence of the instrument’s date and terms. Following the trail the opinion names led to Center for Taxpayer Rights v. IRS, D.D.C. 1:25-cv-00457, whose order of 2025-11-21 (Dkt 53) is a free RECAP PDF on CourtListener, also open to read. An earlier search could not open either docket, or CourtListener’s search; neither was on the path actually needed. The D.D.C. opinion of 2025-05-12 is at https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2025cv0677-67.

  • Partial, rather than attempted or blocked, was a judgment call.

  • Treasury’s own machine-readable press index for 2025 and 2026 (home.treasury.gov) was searched for immigration, alien, visa, remittance and Homeland Security: the four relevant releases are sb0321 (2025-11-20), sb0523 (2026-06-05), sb0608 (2026-08-19) and the FinCEN item, none of them this ask.

  • Federal Register full-text searches over the window: “section 6103” with “Immigration and Customs Enforcement” (0); “memorandum of understanding” with “Internal Revenue Service” and “Immigration and Customs Enforcement” (1, a DHS employment-authorization proposed rule whose only IRS reference is to tax transcripts as evidence of economic necessity); “6103(i)(2)” (0).

  • Litigation, now read rather than led to: Centro de Trabajadores Unidos v. Bessent, D.D.C. 1:25-cv-00677 (filed 2025-03-07), appeal D.C. Cir. 25-5181, argued 2025-10-03 and decided 2026-02-24 — the D.C. Circuit affirmed the denial of a preliminary injunction, holding that § 6103(i)(2) “expressly authorizes disclosure of address information upon receipt of a valid request”. An earlier note predicted that “if a § 6103 memorandum of understanding exists, it is in that record”; it was right.

  • Unified Agenda, 2026-09-01. Treasury’s full Unified Agenda was read at reginfo.gov (2026 agenda, ~200 RINs across DO, FinCEN, TTB, Fiscal Service, IRS and OCC), not the abbreviated Federal Register version. No entry equalizes the tax treatment of citizens and working visa holders, and none provides for sharing tax information with DHS — there is no §6103 disclosure RIN. Two near misses: RIN 1545-BR05, Guidance under Section 6013(g) Election Regarding Treatment of Nonresident Alien Individual, Proposed Rule Stage (NPRM scheduled 11/2026), which only updates the time and manner of an existing election; and RIN 1545-BR98, Excise Tax on Remittance Transfers, Proposed Rule Stage, whose NPRM has already published (2026-04-13, 2026-07085) and which imposes a new tax on remittances regardless of the sender’s status rather than equalizing anything. Both are in the ask’s subject area without naming its object. https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202510&RIN=1545-BR05, https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202510&RIN=1545-BR98

Action
issue
Object
Treasury regulations on visa holder taxes and tax information sharing
ID
458