Source: https://procedurallytaxing.com/category/summons/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 08:33:28+00:00

Document:
Under Section 7602(c)(1), IRS must provide the taxpayer with “reasonable notice in advance” before it summons records from financial institutions, employers or other third parties. The IRS has argued that Publication 1, its Your Rights as a Taxpayer publication, suffices for these purposes. There had not been a published circuit court opinion on the issue until last week’s Ninth Circuit opinion in JB v United States. While the JB opinion is careful to note that its holding is context specific, it holds that Publication 1 did not constitute reasonable advance notice in the case at issue. The opinion also questions whether Publication 1 could constitute reasonable notice in any context.
I will summarize the facts and the court’s approach, and also suggest why this opinion has broad implications.
The taxpayers JB and PB are an elderly couple; JB is an attorney who as state-appointed counsel represented capital defendants in California. In 2013, they were lucky enough to be selected for a National Research Project (NRP) IRS audit for the 2011 tax year. The NRP audits are extensive line by line reviews of all items on a tax return. The letter that notified the taxpayers that they were selected for audit described the NRP audit process and asked the taxpayers to contact a revenue agent. The packet also included Publication 1.
The taxpayers requested to be excused from the NRP audit due to JB’s age and poor health. In particular they passed on declarations from a doctor that the audit would “worsen his hypertension and contribute to hypertensive retinopathy, a deteriorating eye condition, as well as his serious hearing loss.” (I am no doctor and am not sure how hearing loss connects to the audit but that is not really relevant for this opinion).
IRS refused and the taxpayers filed suit to stop the audit. In the meantime the NRP audit went forward and two years later in 2015 the IRS issued a summons to the California Supreme Court seeking “copies of billing statements, invoices, or other documents . . . that resulted in payment to” J.B. In seeking that information, IRS did not separately notify the taxpayers about its contacting the court.
Generally, the IRS will deal directly with you or your duly authorized representative. However, we sometimes talk with other persons if we need information that you have been unable to provide, or to verify information we have received. If we do contact other persons, such as a neighbor, bank, employer, or employees, we will generally need to tell them limited information, such as your name. The law prohibits us from disclosing any more information than is necessary to obtain or verify the information we are seeking. Our need to contact other persons may continue as long as there is activity in your case. If we do contact other persons, you have a right to request a list of those contacted. Your request can be made by telephone, in writing, or during a personal interview.
We reject a categorical approach to this question. We conclude that “reasonable notice in advance” means notice reasonably calculated, under all the relevant circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the possibility that the IRS may contact third parties, and that affords interested parties a meaningful opportunity to resolve issues and volunteer information before third-party contacts are made.
In this case, the sole notice that the government provided J.B. and P.B. that it might contact the California Supreme Court is Publication 1. The IRS sent J.B. and P.B. Publication 1 as part of its initial, introductory letter to the couple explaining that they had been selected for an audit; an audit the couple sought to stop. The Publication did not accompany a specific request for documents, nor is there any evidence that the IRS revisited the notice later in the audit when it knew that J.B. and P.B. had requested an exemption from the research audit and had not provided documents for the audit. More than two years elapsed between when the IRS sent Publication 1 to J.B. and P.B., and when the IRS subpoenaed the billing records and invoices from the California Supreme Court. We do not think that an agency that actually desired to inform a taxpayer of an impending third-party contact would consider Publication 1 adequate notice in these circumstances.
In rejecting the IRS position the court staked out a position that requires the IRS to deliberate and weigh the government’s interest with the individual’s privacy interests, including whether the taxpayer has a reasonable opportunity to give the information the IRS wants so as to avoid the potential embarrassment and loss of privacy that accompanies third-party notifications.
The taxpayers and IRS had extensive contact that could have been a vehicle for additional notice by virtue of the lawsuit that the taxpayers brought to stop the audit.
Although we limit our holding to the facts of this case, we are doubtful that Publication 1 alone will ever suffice to provide reasonable notice in advance to the taxpayer, as the statute requires. We think it unlikely that the broad and colloquial language in the “Third-Party Contacts” paragraph of Publication 1, which states that the IRS may “sometimes talk with other persons,” gives the taxpayer reasonable advance notice that the IRS intends to subpoena, under threat of penalty, third-party documents.
We understand that one result of adopting a context- specific rule may be to make it more difficult for IRS officers, and district courts, to determine whether § 7602(c)(1)’s advance notice requirement is satisfied in any given case. But, to the extent such an administrability problem develops, the responsibility lies with Congress, not the courts. We cannot ignore the text of a statute that hinges the adequacy of notice on a determination of reasonableness. Nor can we ignore the congressional mandate to provide taxpayers faced with a potential third-party summons with a meaningful opportunity to respond with the relevant information themselves so as to maintain their privacy and avoid the potential embarrassment of IRS contact with third parties, such as their employers.
The upshot was the Ninth Circuit affirmed the quashing of the summons. The opinion will likely prompt changes to IRS practice, at least in Alaska, California, Hawaii and Arizona, and perhaps an effort to get Congress to revisit the issue.
The Eleventh Circuit opinion in Presley v US ostensibly is about how IRS can summons a bank for information relating to deposits from a law firm’s clients. The opinion starts with a recounting of the 1980 Winter Olympics, when the US Olympic hockey team, against heavy odds, beat the Soviets. Drilling into the details, the opinion includes the average age of the US team (22), links to the E.M. Swift’s Sports Illustrated article on the win, references the 2004 Disney movie Miracle, and how one of the players (Jack O’Callahan), was so moved by Coach Herb Brooks’ pregame speech that he could recount it decades later.
What is the connection between the power of the IRS to gather information from third parties and the Miracle on Ice?
According to the opinion, more formidable than the Soviet team is the considerable power that the IRS has to get information via its summons powers. The opinion nicely summarizes the statutory framework and Supreme Court guidance that stack the deck heavily in favor of the IRS.
The facts are straightforward. The plaintiffs are a lawyer and his law firm, and they sought court protection to avoid their bank’s compliance with summonses the IRS issued in connection with an exam of Presley’s individual income tax liability.
As the opinion discusses the IRS summonses sought records “pertaining to any and all accounts over which [each Plaintiff] has signature authority,” including bank statements, loan proceeds, deposit slips, records of purchase, sources for all deposited items, and copies of all checks drawn.
Presley objected to the bank’s turning over information related to their clients’ trust and escrow accounts, arguing essentially that his clients’ Fourth Amendment expectation of privacy would be violated if the IRS obtained the information about the clients’ financial transactions with the law firm.
The opinion starts by describing that there is some uncertainty whether the law firm, rather than the clients, can make the Fourth Amendment argument. After all, it is the clients whose privacy interests are at stake. This is akin to a standing dispute; i.e., does the law firm have standing to make the case that its clients’ privacy interests may be violated?
The opinion is able to sidestep that issue, noting that unlike traditional Article III standing disputes, Fourth Amendment standing is not jurisdictional, meaning that the opinion can effectively decide the matter on the merits without weighing in on whether technically Presley can in fact make the argument.
Nor does it matter that Plaintiffs’ clients gave their records to Plaintiffs rather than directly to the bank. Plaintiffs conveyed their records, such as checks for deposit in Presley Law’s escrow or trust accounts, knowing that the firm would, in turn, deposit these items with the Bank. So if Plaintiffs cannot escape Miller directly, Plaintiffs’ clients cannot avoid its application indirectly. In short, Miller precludes us from holding that Plaintiffs’ clients have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the summoned records.
There were two other issues of note in the opinion. Presley also argued that even if there was no Fourth Amendment requirement that the government show probable cause to ensure enforcement, the Florida constitution had a heightened privacy protection for these circumstances. The Eleventh Circuit declined to consider the impact of the Florida constitution on the reach of IRS summons powers, noting that state laws that “conflict with federal laws by impeding the ‘full purposes’ of Congress must give way as preempted,” a doctrine known as the Supremacy Clause. That has come up before in tax cases, as courts have enforced IRS summonses despite, for example, state law doctor-patient privileges.
As a final argument, Presley argued that the district court failed to comply with the so-called John Doe summons procedures under Section 7609(f). That requires the IRS to go to a district court in an ex parte hearing when it seeks information about unnamed third parties. We have discussed that a few times in PT, and I discuss it heavily in Chapter 13 of Saltzman and Book, including in the context of the IRS investigation of crypto currency users.
Here, while the IRS sought information that included information about unnamed third parties (the clients), the main targets were the law firm and Presley himself, who were named on the summons and who did receive notice of the IRS actions. Moreover, the plaintiffs in Presley conceded that their clients were not the subject of the IRS investigation, unlike in the Bitcoin dispute where IRS has been trying to gather information to allow it to determine whether Bitcoin customers were complying with federal tax laws.
For good measure, additional Supreme Court precedent, Tiffany v US, allows the IRS to effectively issue dual purpose summonses that could also provide information about unnamed third parties, provided that the IRS complies with the notice provisions under Section 7609(a)—which it did here.
Taken together, the defenses that the government mustered were more formidable than Vladislav Tretiak, and the bank will have no choice but to comply with the summons and I doubt there will be a Disney movie about this story.
A couple years ago, I wrote a post about the efforts of the IRS to assist the Danish tax agency to collect from a taxpayer in the United States. That case involved a levy on the taxpayer’s assets. Recently, another one of the five countries that have collection treaties with the IRS had an opinion issued based on the efforts of the IRS to assist it in collecting taxes due to France. In the case of Hanse v. United States, No. 1:17-cv-04573 (N.D. Ill. March 5, 2018), the court analyzes the treaty provisions in the context of a summons enforcement case. The application of the summons laws in this case results in an order that the information sought be provided to the IRS/France.
I wrote a post almost four years ago on the failure of tax administration to negotiate collection provisions into every tax treaty and not just have it in five treaties that happen to have been written at a time when someone thought this was a good idea. In a global economy, it still seems like a good idea. We have passed laws seeking to ensure that we know about the income of U.S. citizens around the world and leaned on other countries to cooperate in helping the IRS know of the income. To complement that effort, the IRS needs to have the treaty tools to collect when assets exist overseas and it cannot obtain personal jurisdiction over the taxpayer. The absence of collection language in our tax treaties makes it difficult, and at times impossible, for the IRS to collect from taxpayers who park their assets in the vast majority of countries since the IRS lacks a mechanism for reaching those assets.
France is investigating the potential wealth tax and income tax liabilities of Mr. Hanse for the years 2013-15. The French tax authorities sent to the IRS an exchange of information request seeking information in connection with its investigation. France particularly wanted information about two transfers by Mr. Hanse totaling over 500,000 €. The request stated that Mr. Hanse was a French citizen and that the French tax authorities had exhausted the remedies domestically available for gathering the information. The IRS did not have the information requested. The U.S. competent authority determined that the request was proper under the treaty provisions. So, the IRS served a summons on the party to whom the funds were transferred, a third party in the US, and sent notice to the taxpayer at the address provided by the French authorities.
The taxpayer timely filed a petition to quash the summons raising three objections: 1) the IRS failed to comply with the administrative steps necessary for a valid summons under the IRC because it contacted third parties without providing advanced notice under IRC 7602(c)(1); 2) France could not obtain the information through its own laws so it should not use the treaty to accomplish what it could not do if this were an entirely domestic situation; and 3) the summonsed party is a law firm and some of the materials requested by the summons required protection from disclosure by the attorney client privilege.
The IRS moved to dismiss and attached to its motion affidavits from the competent authority and the revenue agent serving the summons. The court decided to treat this as a motion for summary judgment which is normal in most contexts, though not as normal in a summary proceeding such as a summons enforcement.
Before addressing the first argument, the court notes that the IRS must meet the four elements of the Powell test. We have discussed those elements before. A similar notice argument was addressed in a recent post written by Les. The court notes that the burden on the IRS with respect to the summons remains the same whether the summons involves a “normal” U.S. taxpayer or is done at the request of a treaty partner. Here, the court finds that the affidavits allow the IRS to meet its burden under the Powell test, which it acknowledges is not a heavy burden.
The taxpayer argues that French law would not allow the French authorities to obtain the information sought through the summons and, therefore, those authorities should not circumvent French law and obtain the information just because the U.S. laws do permit the gathering of the information. The court takes this as a challenge to the “legitimate purpose” element of the Powell test. This is where a treaty summons gets a little interesting. Looking at prior case law involving other treaty summonses issued on behalf of France, the court finds that to satisfy the Powell test it need not look at the good faith of the treaty partner but only at whether the IRS acted in good faith in issuing the summons. Since the taxpayer did not challenge whether the IRS issued the summons in good faith and the court saw no indication of bad faith, it finds that this challenge fails.
Petitioner challenges the issuance of a summons to a third party where the IRS has not provided the taxpayer with a notice pursuant to IRC 7602(c)(1). We have written very little about IRC 7602(c), which is a provision that came into the code in the 1998 Restructuring and Reform Act. Les addressed it in an earlier post and notes at least one case that has held the taxpayer should receive specific notice of contact of third parties. Most issues involving this code section, which requires the IRS to notify taxpayers before it contacts thirds parties about them looking for information, concern the IRS position that Pub 1 generically informs them of the possibility that the IRS might do this (thus satisfying the statutory requirement) versus the need, in the view of some taxpayers, for the IRS to specifically tell them who it intends to contact.
I recently wrote on another summons case in which the taxpayer sought to keep the IRS from information based on the attorney-client privilege. The court here notes that a blanket assertion of attorney-client privilege does not work and that the taxpayer needs to assert the privilege on a document by document basis. Because the taxpayer did not support the privilege claim with “any facts from which the Court could find a privilege attaches to the documents that are requested in the summons” the court rejects his privilege argument.
Some aspects of the treaty summons differ from a “normal” summons in their application because of the interplay of the code with non-US taxpayers. Here, the summons gets enforced and presumably France gets the information it needs in order to move forward with its tax investigation. Only a handful of these cases have been reported, suggesting either that countries do not need to resort to the treaty very often in order to complete their investigations or that investigators do not use this tool as effectively as they might. As the global economy continues to push through borders, we should expect more of these cases and there could be many more if we negotiated different treaty language regarding collection.
In an unpublished opinion in United States v. Servin (No. 2-16-cv-05615), the Third Circuit upheld the enforcement of a summons against a Pennsylvania attorney. This case does not break new ground but serves as a reminder of the power of the IRS summons and the limitations of the attorney-client privilege. Mr. Servin did receive some relief from the summons so his efforts in contesting it were not entirely without success.
Mr. Servin must owe a decent amount of taxes since his case is in the hands of a revenue officer. Today, taxpayers often must owe in excess of $100,000 to have their case handled by a revenue officer, although that amount can vary based on location and other factors. I have commented before that having a revenue officer assigned to your case is like getting concierge service because you have a knowledgeable individual to work with to resolve the issues rather than having to deal with the Automated Collection Site (ACS); however, my comment was somewhat tongue in cheek because having a revenue officer assigned to your case, particularly if you are not working to resolve the matter, can cause a taxpayer many problems as the knowledgeable revenue officer uses the powerful collection tools at the disposal of the IRS. Here, the taxpayer feels the effect of having his account assigned to a revenue officer rather than to ACS.
This case involves a collection summons which seeks to obtain from him information that would allow the IRS to collect the outstanding liability. Specifically, the revenue officer wants from him information about which clients owe him so that the revenue officer can send a levy to these individuals and businesses in order to collect the outstanding taxes Mr. Servin has not voluntarily paid. The summons requests Mr. Servin’s current client list, including names and addresses of all of the clients and a list of his cases that will be settling or have settled within a specified time period, including names and addresses of the parties to the case (who would also be persons the revenue officer would levy.) Undoubtedly, having levies served on all of your clients and opposing parties would not enhance Mr. Servin’s business. Preventing that from happening would protect his business and professional interest, in addition to client confidentiality which is why we have this summons case on which to report.
Mr. Servin does not contest that the IRS meets the general Powell standards for issuing the summons. The meet the Powell requirements, the government must show that the summons: (1) is issued for a legitimate purpose; (2) seeks information that may be relevant to that purpose; (3) seeks information that is not already within the IRS’s possession; and (4) satisfies all administrative steps required by the Internal Revenue Code. United States v. Powell, 379 U.S. 48, 57-58 (1964). He argues narrowly based upon the defense of attorney-client privilege. Unfortunately for Mr. Servin, the Third Circuit has pre-existing precedent on the issue of using the attorney-client privilege to protect client identities from summons enforcement in the case of United States v. Liebman, 742 F.2d 807 (3d Cir. 1984). The precedent does not favor the outcome he seeks. The Third Circuit precedent is similar to precedent that exists in other circuits.
The general rule does not permit an attorney to protect client names and addresses from summons enforcement based on attorney client privilege. The Third Circuit finds that Mr. Servin fails to identify any circumstances that would cause his case to fall out of the general rule and allow him to shield his client information. The Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct do not prevent this disclosure despite his desire to use those rules and his citation to them.
He does win a partial victory because the court modifies the summons to eliminate the name of individuals that have not yet settled but will settle in the future. This victory reflects the concerns that the IRS limit its intrusion into client information of an attorney. The IRS does not often or lightly summons attorneys for client information. The revenue officer who wants to summons an attorney must persist in order to obtain permission to do so. Summonsing an attorney results in reviews by both Chief Counsel and Tax Division lawyers before the summons is allowed. IRM 5.17.6.14 & 15 discusses some of the special issues related to summonses issued to attorneys. The reason that the IRM requires much higher level of review of summonses issued to attorneys stems from the very matter at issue in this case. The IRS recognizes the sensitivity of client information and does not want to let revenue officers run loose in seeking this information. So, it wants a review before it seeks enforcement. The IRS also does not like to issue summonses that it does not enforce since doing so undermines the authority of its summonses. This causes it to require review of summonses in sensitive areas.
Here, the revenue officer seeks information that the attorney cannot protect. The summons victory may cause Mr. Servin to full pay the liability in order to avoid having levies issued to many of his clients. If so, the summons itself may serve as a very valuable collection tool. If it does not cause Mr. Servin to full pay the liability, his clients and many individuals in his community may be about to learn about their attorney’s tax compliance or tax dispute. It is possible that he could still contest the liability and prove that he does not owe. It’s hard, however, to unring the bell and explain to a host of people that he did not owe when they receive a levy seeking payment of the liability which is why this is a very sensitive matter even if the names are not protected by attorney-client privilege.
The opinion notes however that the Rules of Professional Conduct are not relevant in the court’s consideration of whether to enforce a summons; rather those rules relate to a state’s possible disciplinary proceedings against a lawyer. Comments to PA Rule 1.6 specifically provide that the scope of the rule is limited by substantive law, and numerous PA cases provide that the Professional Conduct Rules do not govern or affect the application of the attorney-client privilege.
Today marks the 4th anniversary of Procedurally Taxing. Our first post, Welcome to Procedurally Taxing, discusses our goals for the blog. As I discussed in that initial post, we hoped to become a source for developments and to act as a filter to allow readers to hone in on some key issues relating to tax administration and tax procedure. When we started we had no idea how much work was involved in writing and editing. We also did not anticipate how much we would benefit from our readers, many of whom contact us, offer comments and become guest posters. So thanks to our readers for inspiring us to remain engaged.
Enough of the mush and on to some tax procedure.
We have previously discussed the IRS issuance of a John Doe summons on Coinbase. The case has been proceeding and last week an order from a magistrate judge out of the Northern District in California held that an anonymous customer could intervene in the summons enforcement proceedings. This brief posts highlights some of those developments.
Coinbase is an exchange that deals in convertible virtual currency. It operates a bitcoin wallet. It is a big player in the virtual currency market. IRS has been concerned that parties using bitcoin are not complying with their tax obligations. Recall that in 2014 IRS issued Notice 2014-21, where IRS opined that virtual currencies are property for tax purposes, potentially triggering a gain or loss on sale or exchange of a virtual currency.
Account/wallet/vault registration records for each account/wallet/vault owned or controlled by the user during the period stated above including, but not limited to, complete user profile, history of changes to user profile from account inception, complete user preferences, complete user security settings and history (including confirmed devices and account activity), complete user payment methods, and any other information related to the funding sources for the account/wallet/vault, regardless of date.
At the recent ABA Tax Section meeting there was lots of talk about how the IRS summons was overbroad, potentially sweeping up small transactions and people whose information would likely be of no interest to the IRS.
Following service of the summons a number of parties, including Coinbase, sought to intervene to quash the summons. Coinbase also sought to narrow the scope of the summons.
In particular, [IRS] now seeks information for users with at least the equivalent of $20,000 in any one transaction type (buy, sell, send or receive) in any one year during the 2013-2015 period. Further, the IRS does not seek records for users for which Coinbase filed Forms 1099-K during this period or for users whose identity is known to the IRS.
The order does a nice job laying out the procedures for IRS to get enforcement of a John Doe summons, highlighting that it (as with a generic third party or taxpayer summons) is not self-enforcing and also reviewing the special protections Congress set out in Section 7609(f) before the government can get records when it does not know the identity to whom the records belong.
As with any summons enforcement proceeding, the government has to show that it is issuing its summons in good faith and in pursuit of a Congressionally authorized purpose.
The interesting part of the recent order is the District Court considering whether one of the Coinbase customers has the right to intervene under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. There is a bit more to the issue than I describe but whether a party has a right to intervene in the absence of a privilege claim mostly turns on whether the IRS procedures amounted to an abuse of process.
Under that reasoning the IRS could request bank records for every United States customer from every bank branch in the United States because it is well known that tax liabilities in general are under reported and such records might turn up tax liabilities. It is thus no surprise that the IRS cannot cite a single case that supports such broad discretion to obtain the records of every bank-account holding American. While the narrowed Summons may seek many fewer records, the parties agreed to have the Court decide the motion on the original record, and so it has.
There is nothing in the John Doe summons procedure adopted by Congress to provide protections to those to whom the IRS could not give notice that suggests that when the John Doe nonetheless learns of a summons from other means the John Doe has no interest in challenging the enforcement of that summons. The government’s assertion that to do so would place an undue burden on the IRS’s legitimate use of John Doe summons makes no sense. All that is being addressed here is the proposed intervenor’s right to intervene in a proceeding that is already taking place. Moreover, as the IRS concedes, if it knew of the applicant’s identity, it would have to give the applicant notice and the applicant would have the opportunity to challenge enforcement. It is thus unsurprising that the one case to have discussed the issue, at least that the parties have cited, assumed that a subject of a John Doe summons could challenge its enforcement.
That the direct interests of the other parties are now involved in this proceeding is as the court implies a good development. Allowing information from customers to be directly introduced provides an opportunity for the court to be better informed. While the government has a clear view as to what it believes Coinbase customers are up to, the strong reaction to the IRS efforts and the IRS’s narrowing of the summons itself suggest that the IRS worldview may be a bit narrow.
Stay tuned, as the court will now likely address the merits of challenges to the summons itself.
Last week’s article in the New York Times Legal Marijuana Ends at Airport Security, Even if It’s Rarely Stopped discusses the increasingly odd situation of passengers who are legally entitled to possess and use marijuana finding themselves at risk when they transport marijuana across state lines, even if the air travel originates and ends in states where the possession and use is legal. The federal income tax treatment of the marijuana industry likewise reflects an odd reality: those in the business are expected to pay tax on their sizeable profits, yet Section 280E prohibits those in the business from claiming deductions that they would be entitled to if they were trafficking in other products that did not constitute a controlled substance under federal law.
In the NYT article, a spokesperson for TSA stated that it does not actively look for marijuana when it screens passengers; yet if an agent comes across it in her screening (as an agent did with my banana and apple I forgot about placing in my wife’s carry on bag on our flight last month from Frankfurt), she will alert local law enforcement.
In contrast with TSA, IRS appears to be pretty active in enforcing its mandate under Section 280E. High Desert Relief v US, out of a district court in New Mexico, highlights a couple of procedural issues, including the IRS’s ability to use its considerable summons powers to gather information about the businesses and their compliance with the federal civil tax laws.
High Desert Relief (HDR) operates a legal medical marijuana business in New Mexico (its motto is “relief through high quality medicine”). IRS began examining its 2014 and 2015 tax years, and as part of the examinations it issued third party summonses to a bank and the New Mexico Department of Health and another state agency.
[t]rafficking as used in § 280E means to buy or sell regularly. Californians Helping to Alleviate Med. Problems v. C.I.R., 128 T.C. 173, 182 (T.C. 2007). As such, the real issue here is whether the IRS has authority to determine if, in the course of plaintiffs’ business, they regularly bought or sold marijuana. The Court cannot understand why not. Such a determination does not require any great skill or knowledge, certainly not skill or knowledge of a criminal investigatory bent….
The court found that this conditioned availability was not enough. In addition to HDR not showing that there was a complete overlap between the requested documents and what HDR offered to make available, the court pointed to Section 6103(i). That, in certain situations, requires IRS release of tax return information for other federal laws not relating to tax administration. Restricting the IRS’s use of the information was not the same as providing the requested information.
Generally, the IRS will deal directly with you or your duly authorized representative. However, we sometimes talk with other persons if we need information that you have been unable to provide, or to verify information we have received…. Our need to contact other persons may continue as long as there is activity in your case.
Without analysis, the district court in New Mexico found that the generic publication was adequate for purposes of Section 7602(c)(1). As I recently described in the revision to the Saltzman Book IRS Practice and Procedure treatise in the chapter on examinations at 8.7 Third Party Contacts and in Chapter 13 addressing the IRS summons power, last year in Baxter v US a federal district court in California concluded that in fact the generic notice is insufficient to meet IRS’s notice requirements for these purposes. The district court held that the government had to tell the taxpayer which third party it was going to contact. This issue deserved a little more attention in the opinion, and as I have noted in the Saltzman write up, the courts are applying Section 7602(c)(1) and reaching differing outcomes. IRS in years past given more specific notice but lately has defaulted to its Pub 1 for these purposes. The current IRS approach seems to be inconsistent with regulations and Congressional purpose in enacting the notice provisions, and I suspect that other courts will give this issue greater attention.
A final issue in HDR is worth mentioning. The taxpayer argued that the “federal criminal drug laws with respect to state-legal marijuana sales [are] dead letter.” As such, it looked to old cases under Section 162 that allowed beer and liquor distributors deductions for activities that technically violated state laws, such as gifting beer or providing rebates to distributors. States turned a blind eye to those practices and did not enforce the laws prohibiting them. The main difference is that while Section 162 disallows deductions for activities in violation of state law, the Code itself provides that the limitation on deduction under Section 162 only applies if the state law is “generally enforced.” No such limitation appears in Section 280E.
The bottom line for HDR is that Section 280E does not in any way limit the government’s broad reach to access documents and information in a civil examination. The tax system thus contributes to the schizophrenic legal approach to the marijuana business. While the federal government is willingly collecting tax revenues and enforcing the internal revenue laws, the marijuana industry operates on a different substantive plane.
A recent IRS setback in a summons enforcement case out of the Second Circuit piqued my interest, because I spent the final twelve years of my career in IRS Counsel working on IRS’s offshore initiatives addressing tax evasion through the use of offshore accounts in tax secrecy jurisdictions. My take on this recent case is that taxpayers and some practitioners may believe that the era of IRS investigating offshore tax evasion has run its course. I think this case does just the opposite. The Court’s decision demonstrates that much of IRS’s data on offshore tax evasion is dated – possibly even too old to be of any value – but I also suspect that IRS has come to the same conclusion. Rather than moving on to other areas of non-compliance though, I suspect IRS at this moment is developing more tools to secure the next wave of current information on offshore tax evasion. This does not bode well for taxpayers who so far have avoided IRS’s inquiry into their offshore holdings.
In 2000 IRS used permission to use John Doe summonses to secure information on U.S. taxpayers who accessed funds in their secret offshore accounts through American Express and Mastercard credit cards. IRS’s first major success occurred in 2002 when the U.S. District Court entered an order requiring American Express to comply with IRS’s John Doe summons. The information IRS received pursuant to this summons provided the data for what became known as the Offshore Credit Card Project. Rather than go into the specifics, I refer readers to Keith Fogg’s 2012 Villanova Law review article Go West: How the IRS Should Foster Innovation in Its Agents. Subsequent offshore initiatives relied on data secured through John Doe summonses to UBS and other foreign banks, information received from whistleblowers, and information provided by taxpayers applying to one of IRS’s voluntary disclosure programs.
Despite the success in securing records identifying offshore tax evaders, the quality of the information IRS received was sometimes problematic, because it was out of date or incomplete. For example, when a federal judge in Miami ordered compliance with the aforementioned John Doe summons in 2002, it only covered records for tax years 1998 and 1999 – “old years” in IRS parlance. Further, information received often did not dove-tail with IRS’s information. IRS is driven by social security number, name, and to a lesser extent, last known address. Credit card data is driven by credit card number and billing address. This created a mismatch. Once IRS received the summoned information it took many months to link a specific taxpayer to a particular offshore account through a credit card, assemble the case, and assign it to an agent specially trained in examining offshore transactions. The IRM discourages IRS from beginning examinations of “old” tax years – generally those returns beyond the most recent two tax years – unless there are compelling reasons. IRS prefers to examine more current tax years where plenty of time remains on the 3 year statute of limitations under IRC § 6501(a). Although the 1998 and 1999 credit card data was sufficient to prove a taxpayer had a foreign bank account in 1998 or 1999, the information was not particularly helpful in proving how much income was unreported in those years or whether there was unreported income in later, more current years.
As a result, examiners assigned to these early cases often had to issue administrative summonses under IRC § 7602 to taxpayers for their most recent foreign bank account records to secure foreign account information for years after 1999. The Department of Justice, which handles summons enforcement matters before the U.S. District Courts for IRS, has been extremely successful in securing orders enforcing these summonses, but the process takes time. During this long process the data gets older and has diminishing value to IRS. Proof that the data has a limited shelf life was recently demonstrated in a summons enforcement case.
In August 2016 the Second Circuit placed a speed bump along IRS’s road to identifying offshore tax evasion with dated information. In United States v Greenfield, 118 AFTR 2d 2016-5275 (2016) the court vacated the District Court’s order enforcing an IRS summons and remanded the case for further proceedings consistent with its opinion. The case is noteworthy for several reasons, but most importantly I see this as a wake-up call for IRS as well as a reminder to offshore tax evaders that IRS continues to pursue offshore tax evasion rigorously.
In the spirit of the holiday season, I offer the following tale.
Once upon a time there was a toy maker named Harvey Greenfield, his son, Steven, and their toy shop, Commonwealth Toy, Inc. We also have a Grinch, Heinrich Kieber, whose job was to copy, file, and safeguard records at Liechtenstein Global Trust (LGT) a financial institution owned by the Liechtenstein royal family. One day, while tending to his copying duties at the bank, Mr. Kieber decided to press “2” instead of “1” and make an extra copy of records that identified individuals who banked (translate: “hid their untaxed income”) at LGT. Kieber, playing “Secret Santa”, offered the documents to several nations. Many told him to “go Fish,” while other countries, including the U.S. did not. The U.S. found the information to be very helpful in finding out who was naughty and who was nice. Needless to say, Mr. Kieber’s decision did not make him any new friends among the 38,000 residents of Liechtenstein. He was charged with theft of information under Liechtenstein law and promptly went into hiding, leaving a trail of Angry Birds in his wake. Like the Cabbage Patch doll you stood 3 hours in line to buy for your daughter in 1983, his whereabouts today are unknown.
Back to the Greenfields. Several of Kieber’s cache of confiscated documents tied Steven and Harvey to certain offshore entities that had been used, or were being used, to evade taxation. It just so happens that at this time the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had begun hearings in response to the LGT disclosure and a similar leak from the Swiss bank, UBS. Harvey died in 2009, leaving Steven as primary beneficiary of the LGT holdings. PSI twice invited Steven to come in and talk about LGT, Liechtenstein, and foreign accounts in general. The first time Steven failed to appear. PSI was not too pleased with being stood up for its Mystery Date with Steven, so they invited him again. The second time he appeared but asserted his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.
Great stuff, but not enough for IRS to determine how much tax was owed. IRS didn’t have a Clue as to Steven’s gross income. To fill in the considerable gaps in information, IRS issued an administrative summons to Steven for records and testimony. After discussions with Steven’s counsel regarding the breadth of the summons, IRS reduced its scope to the production of documents related to foreign entities to the 2001 through 2006 tax years.
Greenfield refused to comply with the “kinder, gentler” version of the IRS summons. Convinced that this was no Trivial Pursuit, IRS refused to Lego of the issue and brought suit to enforce yet another less expansive version of the original summons in district court. Steven wasn’t having any of that one either and defended by invoking his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.
Generally, a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent is not effective for documents because contents of documents are not testimonial. Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391 (1976). However, while Fisher held that documents were not testimony, the Court held that the act of producing the documents could be testimonial, because it may communicate incriminatory statements of fact. For example, if the only person with access to offshore bank statements is the person who controls the funds in them, the person coming to court with the bank statements is essentially saying (testifying or admitting), “The documents you want exist, I control them, they are authentic, and here they are.” This is the “act of production” defense Steven raised. But the Ping-Pong game did not end there.
The government’s comeback to the “act of production” defense is the “foregone conclusion” rule. If the testimonial aspects of production are a “foregone conclusion”, that is, if the government can establish the “existence, control, and authenticity” of the records independent of the witness’s production of them, the act of producing them loses its testimonial nature. But the government must be ready to establish independently that the documents exist, the witness controls them, and they are authentic.
Based on the record, the Court found the Government met the first two tests: it accepted the existence of the documents in 2001 and Greenfield’s control of them in 2001. It was not so willing, however, to accept their authenticity and turned to the Government to establish the third prong of the test.
The Government elves had their work cut out for them. They went back to their workshop and crafted several arguments with respect to the authenticity of the 2001 records. It put on its Poker face and argued that the 2001 documents could be authenticated in three ways: (1) an LGT employee could come to the United States and authenticate them in court; (2) Kieber himself could come out of hiding and authenticate them; or (3) authentication was possible through Letters of Request issued under the Hague Evidence Convention.
The Second Circuit wasn’t buying any of the Government’s arguments. First, the Court found it unlikely that LGT would send a witness to the United States to authenticate the records. Secondly, it was highly unlikely Kieber, who was in hiding, would do it; and (3) the Government could not show a single instance where Letters of Request issued under the Hague Evidence Convention had been used to authenticate documents from LGT or any other Liechtenstein financial institution in the past. Why would the Government think it would work in this case?
The Court didn’t stop there. Assuming arguendo that the Government passed the 2001 hurdle, it would still have to show that the documents existed and that Steven controlled them in 2013, twelve years later. Existence and control in 2001 does not create an inference of existence and control in 2013. Factors such as the type of records, the likelihood of transfer to another person, and the time interval involved all bear on the matter. In rejecting the Government’s arguments the Court found any number of reasons why Steven may not have had a Monopoly on control of the records from 2001 to 2013 or that the documents still existed in 2013. Therefore, the Court did not enforce most of the summons and Steven did not have to produce the records.

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