Susan B. Long and Philip H. Long v. United States Internal Revenue Service

This case comes as an appeal from the district court’s granting of appellee’s motion for partial summary judgment by which appellants were denied access to certain information they seek under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552 . Appellants request all the information the IRS has compiled in the Taxpayer Compliance Measurement Program (TCMP). TCMP is a continuing series of statistical studies by the IRS on a national scale to measure the level of compliance with federal tax laws.

The IRS has disclosed all statistical tabulations based on the TCMP. The primary issue on appeal is whether TCMP source material must also be disclosed. This source material is in the form of check sheets and data tapes. Check sheets are the underlying documents from which TCMP statistics and conclusions are derived. Each check sheet contains information from an individual taxpayer’s tax return and includes the taxpayer’s name, address, social security number, and all the financial data reported on the return. A check sheet also contains additional information obtained by audit of the return. The computer data tapes contain the same information as the check sheets, with the exception of…