Lawsuit Filed Against IRS Over Withholding Of Documents

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

18 April 2005

The Internal Revenue Service is illegally withholding information about its operations by claiming that some unclassified information would compromise homeland security if released to the public, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week by the Public Citizen Litigation Group.

The lawsuit is part of an ongoing effort by the Syracuse University Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) to obtain statistical information from the IRS about enforcement actions under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Susan B. Long and David Burnham, co-directors of TRAC, a non-partisan research center that disseminates federal government statistical information, used by many groups to analyze the activities of the government.

The documents in question describe IRS information systems and numeric measures used to supply IRS managers with data such as how many audits have been conducted, audit length, and the amount of tax owing as a result of the audit.

Long and Burnham submitted three FOIA requests in November 2004 for information about the IRS's database, all of which were denied. In two cases, the IRS stated that the documents had been designated for "Internal Use" only.

Long, associate professor of management information and decision sciences at Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management, commented:

"Because a fair, effective and open tax system is so important to the nation, the IRS's new wave of secrecy about its operations is deeply disturbing and if left uncorrected could well undermine public confidence along with taxpayer compliance."

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