After a two-year battle, the Internal Revenue Service has released thousands of pages of agency statistics to the Syracuse University-based Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
The statistics contain information on all types of audits, including individual, corporate, partnership and S corporation audits.
The data was originally ordered to be turned over in two court orders issued in 2006. However, the IRS filed a motion for a stay pending an appeal to the Ninth Circuit. In denying the motion for a stay, Judge Marsha Pechman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, wrote, “Defendant has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its appeal, and enforcement of the Court’s June 13, 2008, order will not cause irreparable harm to any party or increase the burden on the IRS and does not impact the public interest.”
Despite this ruling, and despite explicit instructions from the court directing the IRS to immediately comply, the IRS submitted a second motion for a stay. The denial of the second motion included the observation that the “Defendant has repeatedly defied this Court’s orders” and instructed the IRS yet again to comply with the June 2008 order.
Although the IRS has abandoned its request for an expedited ruling and turned over the requested data, it has not withdrawn its motion for a stay.
