Important Findings Report: Tax Sites Sent Data to Facebook

Several major online tax filing services have been transmitting users’ private, sensitive tax and financial information to Facebook, according to a report co-published by The Verge and The Markup. The report said services like H&R Block, TaxAct and TaxSlayer sent the taxpayer data through a widely used code used by webpages to track user activity called Meta Pixel and the data sent to Facebook included information on users’ income, filing status, amounts of refunded taxes and college scholarship amounts received by dependents.

The information sent to Facebook can be used to power the company’s advertising algorithms, the report said. It added that the data is collected regardless of whether the users of the tax filing services had a Facebook account or accounts on other platforms run by Facebook’s owner, Meta.

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