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4 they cannot object to the summons’s scope or work with the IRS (and the court) to provide the records that most likely involve the delinquent taxpayer or his aliases. The owners would have to rely on the recipient of the summons (the bank) to articulate their privacy concerns and negotiate with the agency. Yet there is no guarantee under the statute that the bank will do that, and even if it does, how is the bank supposed to identify which credit cards may have been used by the delinquent taxpayer over a multiyear period?

This situation seems to me to be the kind of circumstance in which Congress would not have intended to prevent the dry cleaning business from attempting to protect its interests. And, in my view, reading §7609 to require notice—and the potential for judicial oversight—in relation to such attenuated tax-collection activities is entirely consistent with the statutory scheme. Conversely, allowing the agency to sidestep oversight of its broad summons power by not providing notice in these kinds of situations undermines the important aims of the default-notice system.

The bottom line is this: As I read the statute, the IRS is not necessarily exempt from notice obligations any time a tax-delinquency matter enters the collection phase. Rather, the exception in §7609(c)(2)(D)(i) merely reflects Congress’s determination that, in some situations, requiring the agency to provide notice in connection with its tax-collection efforts would undermine the balance that the statute strikes with its default-notice requirement. Consequently, I believe that both courts and the IRS itself must be ever vigilant when determining when notice is not required. Doing so properly involves a careful fact-based inquiry that might well vary from case to case, depending on the scope and nature of the information the IRS seeks.