Judge Orders IRS To Turn Over Audit Data To Academic

by Leroy Baker, Tax-News.com, New York

06 April 2006

A United States District Judge has ordered the Internal Revenue Service to turn over statistical data it collects on its audit activities to an educational institution which analyses and disseminates information on the agency's audit practices.

The IRS has been withholding the reports from Professor Susan Long, a noted tax researcher at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a non-partisan data-research organization at Syracuse University, on the grounds that it is no longer required to comply with a previous court order and that TRAC's requests were a financial strain on the agency.

Professor Long, a co-director of TRAC, has been studying IRS data since she used a 1976 court order based on the Freedom of Information Act to force the agency to comply with requests for data.

However, in May 2004, the IRS informed Professor Long that the agency would no longer supply the requested data, and that any future statistical data requests would cost $12,000 per month to receive in electronic format. According to the IRS, its lawyers concluded after lengthy research that the 1976 court order no longer applied and that therefore the agency was within its rights to withhold the information. The IRS also claimed that the data it now reports contains more information that previously.

However, US District Judge Marsha J. Pechman told the agency on Monday that its arguments were "not persuasive", and stated that the IRS could not withhold the requested information simply because releasing it would make more information public.

Judge Pechman ordered the IRS to turn over the data within two weeks to Professor Long, and also awarded her attorney fees.

Recent TRAC reports have claimed that there has been a fall in the number of hours devoted to audits of large businesses and wealthy taxpayers, while the audit rate on lower income groups has increased.

“All of these and many other similar findings were based on the kinds of data that the IRS has been unlawfully withholding from TRAC and the American people,” Professor Long stated last January.

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