Fourth Amendment Challenge to an Internal Revenue Code Section 7602 Summons: United States v. Sun First National Bank of Orlando, 510 F.2d 1107 (5th Cir. 1975)

In 1973, the Internal Revenue Service undertook an investigation of the consolidated income tax return of the First at Orlando. The IRS directed the audit of Sun First National, the lead bank, as part of this investigation. Sun was cooperative at first, providing free access to most of its files. Then the IRS decided to examine the common trust fund to determine Sun\u27s tax reporting performance concerning various trusts it managed. The bank refused to comply with the summons. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered enforcement of the summons. The fourth amendment objection was disposed of in a conclusory manner. The court admitted that its opinion did not squarely address the issues raised because the facts in the record did not disclose arbitrariness. Despite the court\u27s avoidance of the fourth amendment issue, Sun is a correct application of present authorities on standing and intervention. However, this article will attempt to demonstrate that those authorities are unsound and unjustifiably preclude taxpayers and third parties from raising fourth amendment objections in cases like Sun, where the summoned parties possess an arguably protectable privacy right