United States of America v. Charles H. Brown

McCREE, Circuit Judge.

This appeal requires us to decide whether section 7602 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, which provides for the examination and production of “books, papers, records, or other data,” authorizes the Internal Revenue Service to compel a taxpayer, who has otherwise complied with the requirements of a routine audit, to appear before an IRS special agent in order to write, in his presence and at his direction, taxpayer’s former wife’s signature twenty-five times. We hold that § 7602 does not authorize this production of handwriting exemplars not yet in existence.

Brown was…