DC Circ. Not Sure If IRS Can Slip Database Designation
Law360, Sept. 12, 2019
The D. C. Circuit seemed wary Thursday of the Internal Revenue Service’s argument that a system its manual calls a database isn’t actually one for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act suit it’s trying to get out of. The three judges spend part of their morning quizzing an IRS attorney on how the agency’s Asset Forfeiture Tracking and Retrieval System, or AFTRAK, works, so that they could decide for themselves whether the IRS had a duty to comply with a request for all the information it had on seized assets.
Read more here (accessible with free trial subscription)
Oral argument audio available here.
Copy of district court decision here.