IRS faces scrutiny over a summons that appears to have been changed after approval
A taxpayer is asking a federal court to throw out an IRS summons after discovering that an auditor appears to have altered the signed document without updating its dates or approvals.
Julia Jenkins Fancelli, an heir to the Publix Super Markets fortune and a well-known political donor, has asked the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida to quash an IRS third-party summons. Her filing alleges that an LB&I auditor altered a previously approved summons without updating signatures or dates. The procedural posture is a petition to quash, with the IRS response still pending.
The dispute matters because the allegations echo earlier document-integrity issues that arose in conservation easement cases and could renew concerns about supervisory approval and record reliability within the IRS.
The Law in Play
The challenge turns on Internal Revenue Code provisions governing IRS administrative summonses and the four-part test outlined in United States v. Powell (1964). The legal question is whether the IRS followed the required administrative steps when it issued an amended summons to a financial institution.
Fancelli argues the auditor failed to obtain proper supervis…
