Louisiana's child and family services department is leaving the arrangement that hands it a benefit applicant's income records from IRS files

Apply for a benefit in Louisiana and, until now, either of two state agencies could send your Social Security number to the Internal Revenue Service and get back a list of what other people have reported paying you. One of the two is leaving.

The IRS filed a modified matching notice for public inspection on the morning of 20 August. It re-establishes the Disclosure of Information to Federal, State and Local Agencies programme, known throughout the notice as DIFSLA, with the Louisiana Department of Health, which is amending the agreement to change the programmes it administers under it. The Louisiana Department of Children and Families, the notice states, will no longer participate. No reason is given for that, and the notice names no successor arrangement.

What the IRS actually hands over

Not a tax return. The records that move are information returns, the forms third parties file about money they paid you, and the notice gives Forms 1099-DIV, 1099-INT and W-2G as its examples. They are drawn from the Information Returns Master File.

The state agency sends a Social Security number and a name control, which the notice defines as the first four characters of the surname. Where those match, the IRS discloses the payee account number, the payee name and mailing address, the payee taxpayer identification number, the payer name and address, the payer taxpayer identification number, and the income type and amount. The agency may ask monthly for new applicants and once a year for everybody already receiving a benefit.

The authority is section 6103(l)(7) of the Internal Revenue Code, which obliges the Secretary to disclose current return information on unearned income, on written request, to agencies administering a specific list of programmes. That list is long and it is statutory: cash assistance under part A of title IV of the Social Security Act, Medicaid and the low income subsidy under section 1860D-14, supplemental security income, the territorial programmes in Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands, unemployment compensation, food assistance under the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008, state supplementary payments, and several needs based veterans benefits including parents' dependency and indemnity compensation. The underlying mandate is older still, and the notice traces it to the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984.

The effective date does not sit still

The notice gives 30 days from publication for comments. It then says that if no comments arrive, the re-established agreement takes effect on 1 September 2026, "provided it is a minimum of 30 days after the publication date". Publication is scheduled for 21 August. Thirty days after that is 20 September.

Both sentences are on the same page. The notice does not reconcile them.

Elsewhere the terms are stated cleanly enough. The agreement is expected to cover an 18 month period running from 14 February 2026 to 30 June 2027, matches run on an ongoing basis, and the parties may ask for a 12 month extension 90 days before expiry. The last version of this notice was published in June 2024.