Tax industry group is 'trying to chill my research,' Professor Ventry tells N.Y. Times

A Nov. 5 New York Times story headlined “Industries Turn Freedom of Information Requests on Their Critics” focused on Professor Dennis J. Ventry, Jr.’s strong criticism of the Free File tax program, and a public information request that followed. 

After Ventry criticized the Free File program - a purportedly no-cost tax-return preparation service that a coalition of tax return-preparation companies, including H&R Block and Intuit, offers in partnership with the Internal Revenue Service - this past summer, UC Davis received a request from the Free File Alliance industry group to provide everything Ventry had written or said about the companies in 2018. Filed under the California Public Records Act, the request includes access to all emails, text messages and voicemail messages that pertain to the companies.

“They are trying to bully me,” Ventry told the Times about the industry group. “More importantly, they are trying to chill my research and scholarship, whether it has to do with tax law reform or not.”

The PRA request had nothing to do with acting in the public interest, Ventry said, but had the intent of “chilling academic freedom, scholarship, and collaboration among academics at different universities, both public and private.”

Ventry has written that Free File is a “failed program” that “inflicts substantial harm on taxpayers” by confusing them, pushing them toward paid products and failing to protect their personal data. He is an advocate for a no-cost, simplified, government-provided tax return preparation service.

The Free File Alliance maintains Ventry has a conflict of interest, because he supports a government-direct free tax return preparation program and has a relationship with the IRS in his role as chair of the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council. But, as the article points out, the advisory council is an outside, voluntary body of experts who advise the IRS on tax administration issues. Ventry never has been employed by the IRS, and he was a published critic of Free File long before joining the council.

The Free File Alliance’s public information request, reporter Elizabeth Williamson writes in the Times story, is “just one example of how both state-level public records laws and the Federal Freedom of Information Act, written to ensure transparency and accountability in government, have morphed into potent weapons in legal and business disputes, raising questions about the chilling effects - and costs - they impose on targets who are doing research in controversial or sensitive fields.”

Professor Ventry is an expert in tax policy and legal ethics. His research interests include tax expenditure analysis, family taxation, professional responsibility and standards of care, tax filing and administration, tax compliance, public finance, and tax and legal history. He is co-author on the casebook, Federal Income Taxation with Martin McMahon, Jr., Daniel L. Simmons, and Bradley T. Borden.

 

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