Tax Courts Become Less Secret

According to Louise Story, Secrecy Is Lifted in Some Tax Court Trials, NY Times, July 12, 2005,

Last week, the tax court announced that it would end a 20-year-old practice of keeping secret reports prepared by its hearing judges, known as special trial judges. The court said it was making the change because of a Supreme Court ruling in March that criticized the tax court’s secrecy * * *

The ruling is an outgrowth of the IRS’s investigation of the late late Burton W. Kanter, a famous tax lawyer who made his fortune financing movies (e.g., One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Rocky Horror Picture Show) and advocating foreign trusts to escape domestic taxes.

The article quotes Prof. Norman R. Williams, of the Willamette University College of Law as stating,”This is going to fundamentally change how these cases are heard by special trial judges.”