Opinion ID: 4544634
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Already in possession of the IRS

Text: Agent Conroy’s declaration states that besides the information contained in Bank of America’s sealed response, the rest of the information sought in the summonses is “not already in the possession of the Internal Revenue Service.” R. 5-1 (Conroy Decl. ¶ 13) (Page ID #114). Byers suggests that the information sought in the summons served on Chase is already in the IRS’s possession, because the IRS acquired this information through the summons it served on Chase during its investigation into Byers’s ex-husband.7 Yet Byers does not explain what was contained in that summons. This omission, she says, exists “because Conroy never served her with a copy of [the summons] as required under section 7609(a)(1)-(2).” Appellant Br. at 21. In other words, Byers argues that she is hamstrung from contesting the already-in-possession prong of the Powell test because the IRS has improperly denied her the knowledge of what information it has. The relevant statutory section, however, requires notice of the issuance of a summons only to “any person . . . who is identified in the summons,” 26 U.S.C. § 7609(a)(1), and Byers does not claim that she was identified in the summons served in connection with her exhusband’s case. As Byers’s own exhibit demonstrates, the notification that Byers received in 2018 during this prior investigation states only that “[t]he requested information [by the IRS] includes information that relates to you.” See, e.g., R. 8-3 (Response to Mot. to Dismiss, Ex. B) (Page ID #151) (emphasis added). Because she was not apparently entitled to notice under the third-party summons statute, Byers thus fails to explain away her inability to identify what information is already in the IRS’s possession.