Accordingly, individuals should contact the Internal Revenue Service employee conducting an audit or effecting the collection of tax liabilities to gain access to such records, rather than seeking access under provisions of the Privacy Act. When and if IRS personnel are notified to irregularities, protests, objections, etc., it is up to the officer or agent to prove authority. Although the Bothke decision doesn't touch everything we are now targeting, if the IRS officer or agent fails to prove authority when challenged, he or she may be held liable, without immunity, if it later proves that there were in fact procedural flaws and authority was imposed without the force of law. In fact, via the IRS restructuring and reform act of 1998, Congress specifically made IRS personnel accountable for mandates and prohibitions of the Internal Revenue Code, Treasury regulations, and published policy, including the Internal Revenue Manual. However, I seriously doubt that lower-level IRS personnel understand particulars of law and fact, and what does or doesn't constitute testimonial evidence, any more than most of us do.
Factual circumstance is a primary issue as law is passive until it can be applied to facts.
Consequently, we have to have the witness in order to find out what law he relied on to justify his submission of fact evidence. Since IRS personnel do not have first-hand knowledge of underlying facts, nor do they know what law the witness relied on, they are incompetent witnesses. All IRS personnel can do is produce whatever evidence there is in IRS files and disclose the testimonial source they rely on. The computer-generated RACS report serves as an example. The Form 4340 or whatever is presumed correct until it is challenged and proven to be in error.