If taxpayers at any income level are ever to feel any confidence about the security of the information they provide to the government, then the perpetrators of this crime must be identified, arrested, fired, shamed, fined, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They must spend time in prison — several years, or even decades, as much as prosecutors can possibly arrange. These criminals must not be given plea deals. This is a clear case in which the criminals must be made into an example for others. Even without malicious IRS bureaucrats, government is already a far less reliable and responsible steward of everyone’s personal information than any honest retail business. It has repeatedly proven as much. Even if every private company in the United States were perfectly fastidious about preventing the leak of personal information (and they have not been), government bureaucracy has already done so much damage in this regard, especially due to one of the Obama administration’s worst unsung scandals, that there probably isn’t a soul between Washington and Wuhan who doesn’t already have enough information to apply for a fraudulent credit card in your name.