 A new audit shows the Internal Revenue Service improperly withheld information
from requesters under the Freedom of Information Act 12.3 percent of the time.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, or TIGTA, the IRS’
auditor, reviewed a statistically valid sample of 65 FOIA requests and found
eight requests for which the tax collector improperly withheld information.
“The eight cases we identified included improperly withheld information of
examination and collection activity and other tax return information that the
taxpayer or authorized Power of Attorney should have received,” the audit
states.
Extrapolated, some 346 FOIA/Privacy Act requests may have had information
erroneously withheld between Oct. 1, 2013, and Sept. 30, 2014, according to the
audit.
TIGTA also found that the IRS did not release 7.3 percent of the Internal
Revenue Code information requests reviewed — information that should have been
open to the requester.
“Although the IRS properly released thousands of pages from these documents,
taxpayer rights still may have been violated because some information was
erroneously withheld,” the audit notes.
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 The IRS must ensure the provisions of the Freedom of Information
Act, the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Internal Revenue Code are
followed. Errors can violate taxpayer rights “and result in improper
disclosures of taxpayer information,” according to the auditor.
TIGTA’s audit last year found the IRS improperly withheld
FOIA-requested information from taxpayers in 11.3 percent of the
reviewed cases.
In addition, sensitive taxpayer information was inadvertently
disclosed in 13 FOIA requests, or about 21 percent of the cases
reviewed.
The 2014 audit came at a sensitive time for the IRS, which faced
lawsuits from conservative watchdog groups due to the agency’s
failure to turn over emails and other information tied to the IRS
scandal involving tax-exempt status for right-of-center groups.
While the number of backlogged information request cases increased
for a second straight year, TIGTA’s most recent audit found that
agency responses “were timely.”
There are no timeframes under which the IRS must respond to
taxpayers’ Internal Revenue Code information requests, but the IRS
has established guidelines of responding within 30 business days.
TIGTA found that the IRS took more than 30 business days to respond
in 24.5 percent of the information requests reviewed.
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