Court Opinion

ID: 9425993
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:24.700234+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.463918
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom Mr. Justice Powell joins,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion and its judgment, and add this word only to emphasize the narrowness of the issue at stake here. We decide today that the Internal Revenue Service has statutory authority to issue a summons to a bank in order to ascertain the identity of a person whose transactions with that bank strongly suggest liability for unpaid taxes. Under the circumstances here, there was an overwhelming probability, if not a certitude, that one individual or entity was responsible for the deposits. The uniformly deteriorated condition of the currency and the amount, combined with other unusual *152aspects, gave the Service good reason, and, indeed, the duty to investigate. The Service's suspicion as to possible liability was more than plausible.* The summons was closely scrutinized and appropriately narrowed in scope by the United States District Court.
The summons, in short, was issued pursuant to a genuine investigation. The Service was not engaged in researching some general problem; its mission was not exploratory. The distinction between an investigative and a more general exploratory purpose has been stressed appropriately by federal courts, see, e. g., United States v. Humble Oil & Refining Co., 488 F. 2d 953, 958 (CA5 1974), pet. for cert. pending, No. 73-1827; United States v. Armour, 376 F. Supp. 318 (Conn. 1974), and that distinction is important to our decision here.
We need not decide in this case whether the Service has statutory authority to issue a “John Doe” summons where neither a particular taxpayer nor an ascertainable group of taxpayers is under investigation. At most, we hold that the Service is not always required to state a taxpayer’s name in order to obtain enforcement of its summons, and that under the circumstances of this case it is definitely not required to do so. We do not decide that a “John Doe” summons is always enforceable where the name of an individual is lacking and the Service’s pupose is other than investigative.
Upon this understanding, I join the Court’s opinion.

The Service may not have reached “first base,” see ante, at 143 n. 1, but it had been at bat before, and it knew both the game and the ball park well.