It’s Tax Season — The Perfect Time for Trump to Sell This “Critical” IRS Computing Center

The Trump administration is planning to sell a major IRS computing center crucial to processing the tax returns of millions of Americans — just in time for tax season.

The IRS Enterprise Computing Center in Martinsburg, West Virginia, is included on a list of over 400 “empty and underutilized” federal properties marked for liquidation. It is one of two agency data facilities that make possible the collection of federal taxes in the United States. The Martinsburg data center has for decades housed the IRS “Master File,” an authoritative national record of tax return data and tax status for every tax-paying American individual and corporation, containing a historical computerized archive of every return and refund.

While Martinsburg’s systems are vital around tax season — exactly when the Trump administration has ostensibly put it up for sale — its databases are queried year-round.

On Tuesday, the Martinsburg center was flagged by the General Services Administration as one of hundreds of “noncore” facilities that should be sold off to save the federal government money. “Decades of funding deficiencies have resulted in many of these buildings becoming functionally obsolete and unsuitable for use by our federal workforce,” the GSA noted. But just last year, a GSA work order for roof repairs said the exact opposite about the Martinsburg facility, describing it as “a critical component of IRS’s operations, which, during peak season, processes over 13 million tax returns each day. Due to the continuous operations year-round and critical mission performed within, this project is viewed as a high priority.”

It’s unclear if the administration intends to shutter the installation or eventually lease it back from private owners. Neither the GSA nor IRS immediately responded to a request for comment.

Shortly after the GSA published the list of unwanted federal properties, it quickly amended and then deleted it entirely, leaving agencies in a state of confusion and disarray. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that while the sales process had been paused, “the plan is still to dispose of the buildings.”

Travis Thompson, a tax attorney with Boutin Jones and expert on IRS technology practices, told The Intercept the Martinsburg computing center is, contrary to the GSA’s new claim, absolutely mission-critical infrastructure.

“It goes to the very backbone of what the IRS does,” Thompson said.

The data housed at Martinsburg is also regularly tapped for internal investigations to ferret out fraud, Thompson said. He speculated that the sale, should it go through, would likely either result in the facility being sold to private owners and leased back to the federal government, or shuttered entirely. Owing to the extremely sensitive nature of the tax records held there, Martinsburg has always been a “super high-security facility,” and housing these computer systems under privatized ownership “does raise questions about protecting taxpayer data and the privacy of taxpayer data,” Thompson said. An interruption of service caused by a change in ownership would present potentially widespread disruption to the IRS and American taxpayers.

In February, The Intercept reported that the IRS was purchasing a multimillion-dollar Nvidia AI supercomputing cluster which was to be installed at Martinsburg.

In a statement to The Intercept, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., suggested private ownership is more likely.

“If the Trump administration really sold this site, the IRS data system would be down to a single backup facility in Memphis, and all it would take to knock the entire agency offline is one hack or power outage. It’d be an economic disaster,” said Wyden, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. “That said, the likely story here is that Trump and Musk want to help a bunch of vultures plunder the country in a rent-seeking scheme, and after they sell off essential sites like this IRS facility, American taxpayers are going to be on the hook paying rent for real estate they should rightfully own.”

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