Amicus Brief In Supreme Court Docket 19-930 (CIC Services v. IRS) On Anti-Injunction Act History and Application

Abstract

CIC Services did not want to give the IRS certain information required by Notice 2016-66. It and another entity instead sued in federal district court, asking the court to: (1) declare Notice 2016-66 invalid and (2) permanently enjoin the Service from enforcing the Notice. The district court dismissed the suit, finding it barred by the Anti-Injunction Act (AIA), 26 U.S.C. §7421(a), and the Declaratory Judgment Act (DJA), 28 U.S.C. §2201(a). A split Sixth Circuit panel affirmed. A closely divided Sixth Circuit denied a petition for rehearing en banc. The Supreme Court granted cert. CIC Services and its amici argue for a radical departure from the Supreme Court's settled reading of the AIA. They say the AIA’ bars only those suits brought by persons against whom the government is proceeding directly to assess or collect a tax. They say this suit seeks only to restrain the collection of information and therefore an injunction here would not restraint the assessment or collection of any tax. This brief explains why CIC Services' argument is wrong. The argument misreads history, ignores the causal relationship between information reporting and assessment, and misappropriates language in the Tax Injunction Act (TIA) to the AIA. This brief argues that the AIA bars suits that threaten the system of assessments and collections and not just suits involving a particular dispute about a particular tax. The brief supports its argument by: (1) analyzing all the earliest cases to interpret the AIA; (2) analyzing the impact of historical changes in tax administration; and (3) analyzing the crucial role of information reporting in the current system of assessment.