Bad penmanship not “good cause” to compel production of tax returns
In Robmar Realty Assoc. v. Rockaway Twp. the Tax Court upheld the policy of protecting tax returns from disclosure in litigation unless the information is clearly relevant to the subject matter of the action. In Robmar, the court denied the Township’s motion to compel copies of plaintiff’s tax returns. While not apparent from the moving papers, the court was able to glean that the reason for the motion stemmed from the fact that the income and expense statements already provided by Robmar were handwritten. The court found that the Township’s moving papers did not assert that the information provided was insufficient. However, in its reply brief the Township later alleged that the income & expense statements were “incomplete,” “incomprehensible,” and “illegible.” The court found that the Township failed to demonstrate what specific information it hoped to gather from additional discovery that was not already provided by Robmar. In denying the Township’s motion, the court found that “[t]he mere convenience of type-written or computer-generated information is not sufficient to access Robmar’s potentially confidential financial information.”
A copy of this unpublished opinion may be found here.
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