Opinion
3:19-cr-528-IM
05-24-2022
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. JAMES W. MILLEGAN, Defendant.
DECLARATION OF IRS FIELD COLLECTIONS TERRITORY MANAGER CARMEN NAILLON
CARMEN NAILLON JUDGE
I affirm under penalties of perjury that the statements in the following paragraphs are true and correct:
1. I work in the Collections Division of the IRS. I have been employed by the IRS Collections Division for approximately 34 years. I worked as a Collections Revenue Officer from approximately 1991 to 2009. In 2009, I became a local Collections manager, which is the entry-level Collections supervisory position.
2. I am currently an IRS Field Collections Territory Manager. I have held this position since 2019. I am the Collections territory manager for six states: Oregon, southwest Washington, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Nebraska. I supervise all the Collections personnel in these six states.
3. I am completely familiar with the duties of IRS Collections personnel, including Revenue Officers. I am also completely familiar with the IRS Collections recordkeeping system and procedures.
4. IRS Collections personnel record all significant Collections activity regarding a taxpayer in the IRS's Integrated Case Processing system (ICS). This record is informally called a Case History.
5. IRS Collections personnel in Oregon began to use the ICS recordkeeping system in 1999. Each taxpayer's Case History is intended to be an accurate record of IRS Collection activity regarding that taxpayer. Collections employees are instructed to make accurate and timely entries of every significant event into a Case History. Collections employees, including management personnel, rely on the accuracy of the entries in the Case History to perform their duties. These duties include planning the next steps in the Collections process and, for managers, evaluating the performance of individual Revenue Officers. If a taxpayer appeals a Collections manager's decision, for instance the denial of an installment payment agreement, the Collections Appeals unit relies on the accuracy of the Case History when considering the taxpayer's appeal.
6. Each entry in a Case History cannot be changed or deleted after the close of each business day, and this had been true of the ICS system since 1999. This is to ensure the Case History is an accurate permanent record.
7. IRS Collections personnel who make entries in a Case History are aware that a very small percentage of Collections cases end up in civil litigation and an even smaller percentage are referred to IRS Criminal Investigation for investigation and possible prosecution.
However, making entries in a Case History due to the possibility a Collections case may end up in civil or criminal litigation is not a principal purpose of the Case History, but it can be one purpose.
8. IRS Collections personnel, including Revenue Officers, are not law enforcement personnel and they perform no law enforcement functions. The job and function of an IRS Revenue Officer is to contact taxpayers to collect tax returns and taxes, and to bring people into tax compliance.
9. Only IRS Special Agents are law enforcement personnel and conduct criminal investigations. IRS criminal investigation personnel have no access to the ICS system and cannot make or delete entries in a Case History.
10. IRS Revenue Officers can develop information of fraudulent conduct by taxpayers but the primary purpose is to determine if civil fraud penalties should be assessed. If a Revenue Officer identifies a sufficient number of “badges of fraud” the Revenue Officer, with approval of a supervisor, can refer the taxpayer for criminal investigation.