The Internal Revenue Service, defying three court orders, continues to withhold crucial statistical data the public needs to judge how the agency is enforcing the nation’s tax laws, according to a motion filed today in the Federal District Court in Seattle by longtime IRS expert Susan Long.
A professor in the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, Long is also the co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research center affiliated with both the Whitman School and the Newhouse School of Public Communications. Since 1989, TRAC has used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain data from a range of federal agencies that it then makes available to the public.
In the February 11 filing Long requests that Judge Marsha Pechman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington enforce two of her own court orders against the agency, issued in 2006, as well as the court’s 1976 consent agreement on the same issue.
In addition to her position at the School of Management, Long since 1989 also has been co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data-research organization affiliated with both Whitman and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. TRAC has provided the public with numerous special reports and detailed information about the operations of scores of federal agencies, including the IRS.
According to Long, “the unlawful actions of the IRS have worked to prevent the American people from seeing how the agency is enforcing the nation’s tax laws. The agency’s activities are unconscionable. How can the public have confidence that these critical laws are being enforced in an equitable and effective way when this powerful agency itself chooses to flout the law, and openly disobeys very clear court orders mandating what the IRS is required to do?”
For several decades after Long obtained the original 1976 decree from Judge Walter McGovern ordering the IRS to provide her with statistical information about its audit, collection and other enforcement activities, the agency largely abided by the ruling. Starting in mid-2004, however, the IRS began withholding more and more data, even while it acknowledged the existence of the 1976 order.
As a result, in early 2006 Long filed a motion in Seattle requesting the court to issue a new ruling requiring that the IRS abide by its previous order. Several months later, on April 4 and August 2, 2006, Judge Pechman issued two orders requiring the agency to promptly provide her complete copies of a regularly produced statistical report called Table 37 and other data. The judge also awarded Long her attorney’s fees.
In the current filing with Judge Pechman, however, Long said the agency had largely ignored the judge’s 2006 rulings and refused to abide by terms of the original consent order as well.
Because of the IRS’s very poor record, Long’s filing asked the court to establish a series of precise schedules for the production of the various statistical reports she has requested. In addition, on an ongoing basis, she also asked the judge to require that the IRS certify in writing that the material it was producing was in fact complete.
Scott Nelson with the Public Citizen Litigation Group and Eric M. Stahl with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Seattle, Wash. are representing TRAC on a pro bono basis in this filing.
Public Citizen has litigated more than 300 cases under FOIA in the past 35 years, winning most of them and forcing government agencies to disclose information that is gathered at taxpayer expense and that allows the public to exercise needed oversight of the government.
To see the filing and a news release, go to http://trac.syr.edu/foia.
