A recent case reveals the perils of maintaining the attorney-client and work product privileges. As it demonstrates, additional precautions may be necessary in the context of privileged documents that are utilized in the tax context, particularly where those documents are used to support a reporting position. United States v. Sanmina Corporation & Subsidiariesinvolved a dispute between the IRS and …
The accountant-client privilege, commonly referred to as the tax practitioner privilege, is codified in section 7525 of the Internal Revenue Code. However, before you put much stock in the privilege, a word of warning: courts have interpreted the accountant-client privilege to be extremely limited in scope. For example, it does not apply in state court matters or in criminal matters, …
A recent decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v. Greenfield demonstrates that the Fifth Amendment’s privilege is alive and well in the context of government demands for foreign bank records. The case arose in the context of an IRS summons seeking a taxpayer/defendant’s foreign bank account records. The defendant, in refusing to comply with the …
