Important government documents are often shielded from Freedom of Information Act requests because of an exemption in the law that allows federal departments and agencies to withhold materials created before the issuance of an official policy. It’s known as the “internal deliberative process” exemption and it enables officials to withhold virtually all memoranda, e-mails, studies, or other documents created by agency employees or contractors as part of the policymaking process. With hundreds of thousands of FOIA requests being submitted to the government every year, the “internal deliberative process” exemption is among the most frequently cited exemptions used by federal officials to keep documents out of the view of taxpayers.
But don’t expect the government to extend the same privilege it demands for itself to private companies. The Internal Revenue Service is in the final stages of implementing a new proposal in which it asserts the right to require every business in America with $10 million or more in annual revenues to turn over to the government reams of heretofore private internal documents analyzing the company’s potential worst-case tax liabilities. Prudent businesses continually assess their potential tax bills to account for contingent liabilities. But company officials and the independent tax experts and accountants they often use don’t always agree on whether this deduction is sound or that one is justified. Such discussions are aired in the very company documents the IRS is now going after.As St. John’s University business professor Anthony Sabino told the New York Post recently, what the IRS wants is “an easy road map full of red flags to tell examiners where to go inside a corporation in search of any areas it might want to dispute to collect new levies.”
