Sliding under the Section 6103 tag requires more than a handshake, but maybe James M. Meyer, Transferee, Docket No. 1072-22, filed 8/6/24, and his trusty attorneys  (whom I”ll call “The LIttle Foxes”) can craft narrow enough demands for IRS’ materials relating to its criminal investigation of James (“Little Jim”) Haber sufficient to cast shade on Little Jim’s Form 872 SOL extenders, which rope James M. in via TEFRA as transferee in a MidCo-type roundy-round, where assets are stripped, leaving a C Corp with massive taxes and no assets.

I’ve blogged these by the bushelbasketful. Little Jim and Grant Thornton were running a bunch these (hi, Judge Holmes). So there is a transactional relationship between James M and Little Jim to scale the Section 6103(h)(4)(C) barrier.

The key here is whether the TMP (Little Jim) signed the extenders, thereby binding the partners thereto, to try to buy his way out of the slammer, while kicking said partners to the cliché. In such event, 2 Cir has held that’s a nonwaivable conflict of interest, and the partners aren’t bound.

Judge Ronald L. (“Ingenuity”) Buch, like a good first-baseman, is holding The Little Foxes close to the bag. Trying to show Little Jim’s and some of Grant Thornton’s people had a propensity to engage in miching malicho, hence give shady advice to partners, fails because such propensity evidence is inadmissible. See, e.g., FRE §404(b).

But I’ll give The Little Foxes a Taishoff “Good Job, Second Class” for the conflict-of-interest move.