US v Meyer presents a somewhat unusual context for a court’s application of the Anti Injunction Act. Meyer stems from an injunction action due to allegations that Meyer promoted “an abusive tax scheme that result[ed] in scheme participants claiming unwarranted federal income tax deductions for bogus charitable contributions.” In 2018, the parties settled that suit and filed a joint motion for permanent injunction. The settlement expressly did not preclude the US from “pursuing other current or future civil or criminal matters or proceedings,” or preclude Defendant from “contesting his liability in any matter or proceeding.”
Following the settlement, the IRS began a civil investigation and proposed approximately $7 million in Section 6700 civil penalties. Following the proposed assessment, Meyer sought a protective order from the federal district court that had previously been the forum for the injunction proceeding. In particular, Meyer alleged that the IRS’s computation of the proposed 6700 penalty improperly relied on admissions he had made in the injunction proceeding, in violation of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 36(b). FRCP 36(b) provides that “an admission under [Rule 36] is not an admission for any other purpose and cannot be used against the party in any other proceeding.”
The request for a protective order was initially heard by a magistrate judge. In April, that judge issued a report and recommendation concluding that Meyer’s request for relief was barred under the AIA. In so doing, the magistrate judge held that the AIA applied even though Meyer did not bring the suit but instead sought a protective order in a suit that the US had brought (recall that the AIA provides that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person….”). Meyer had sought relief based upon a federal district court’s broad power under Fed Rule Civ Procedure 26 which upon a showing of “good cause,” provides that a court may issue a protective order providing a variety of remedies, such as precluding discovery altogether or “specifying terms … for the disclosure or discovery.”
In finding that the AIA barred the request for a protective order stemming from an alleged violation of Fed Rule Civ Procedure 36 from a government-brought injunction case, the magistrate noted that there was no case law squarely on point but looked to analogous cases applying the AIA where taxpayers sought to limit information that the IRS could use in civil proceedings. According to the magistrate, Meyer’s relief request was essentially requiring the IRS to recalculate the penalty and “preclude the IRS from using certain information to assess a tax penalty and is, therefore, impermissible under [the AIA].”
In finding that the AIA did not allow the court to issue a protective order, the magistrate punted on the issue as to whether Rule 36 had any impact on the IRS’s proposed penalty assessment, and whether a “proceeding” for Rule 36 purposes also included an IRS civil penalty examination. The magistrate noted that the substantive issue could be teed up in a refund proceeding.
Following the magistrate’s report, Meyer timely appealed the recommendation, with the district court then as per Fed Rule Civ Procedure 72 reviewing the matter on a de novo basis. The federal district court judge affirmed and adopted the magistrate’s order, though the opinion is somewhat noteworthy because it addresses Meyer’s additional filings with the court briefly dismissing Meyer’s argument that CIC Services supported finding that the AIA did not apply:
In the present case, the relief Defendant seeks falls squarely within the contours of the Anti-Injunction Act—namely, to limit the information the IRS may consider in its assessment of $7,066,039.00 in tax penalties under § 6700. See ECF No. [98] at 5 (requesting that the Court “issue an order preventing the Government and its client, the IRS, from using [Defendant’s] Rule 36 Admissions to support factual conclusions in the IRS’s Section 6700 Penalty examination.”); ECF No. [105] at 10 (“request[ing] that this Court enter an order directing the Government that it may not use the Defendant’s RFA Responses for any purpose other than as admissions in this proceeding.”) (emphasis in original); see also CIC Serv., 141 S. Ct. at 1593 (“suits sought to prevent the levying of taxes … [cannot] go forward.”). Thus, the Court agrees with [the magistrate judge’s] conclusion that Defendant’s Motion is barred under the Anti-Injunction Act.
Conclusion
As did the magistrate judge’s, the district court’s order ended with a statement that Meyer was not without recourse as he could bring a refund proceeding and thus get a court to address the merits of Meyer’s claim that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 36(b) should bar the IRS from using admissions from a separate injunction in calculating a 6700 penalty in a civil exam. Of course, a refund suit is predicated on Meyer satisfying Flora, though the 6700 penalty has special statutory rules allowing for partial payment to secure court review.