Thomas J. Smith v. United States of America, Ira Loeb, J. Thomas Johnson, Kevin Houlihan, William Smith and Richard Dunn

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge.

Section 6103(a) of the Internal Revenue Code (the Code) 1 prohibits disclosure of federal tax return information by, among others, any employee or official of the United States. Thomas J. Smith claims that Ira Loeb, the District Director of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in Springfield, Illinois, violated that provision when he informed J. Thomas Johnson, then-Director of the Illinois Department of Revenue (IDR), that Smith had not filed federal tax returns for either 1982 or 1983. At the time of the disclosure, Smith was employed by the IDR as the liaison official…