A New Hampshire federal court wrongly found that a man’s efforts to block the Internal Revenue Service from obtaining his records from cryptocurrency platforms would unlawfully restrain the collection of tax, he told the First Circuit.

James Harper’s suit requesting the IRS expunge his financial records that it obtained from unknown cryptocurrency exchanges violates neither the Anti-Injunction Act nor the Declaratory Judgment Act, which bar lawsuits that would restrain tax collection or that implicate federal tax liabilities, Harper told the appeals court in a brief Friday. The lower court incorrectly dismissed his case in finding his arguments were barred by both acts, he said.

Published in Law360

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