Quatloos!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/busin ... =RecEngine

What stood out for me here was what standing did the professor have to file the suit? If this suit is successful it should set a useful precedent to allow other whistleblowers to file similar suits.

I'm more curious how an economics professor got hold of the detailed tax documents that a Corporation filed with the IRS.

Citigroup trades on the NYSE so it's a public company in that context.

Documents I've seen presented in annual statements and such don't include the specific details that would be in a tax filing - which I would deduce one would need in order to complete one's own analysis of what taxes should have been paid.

Perhaps there's a particular form that needs to be filed with the SEC that would contain such details?

Or can that kind of information be acquired through a freedom of information request?

Edited to add:

Ahh - I see. After finishing a review of the article, it's not so much a "whistleblower vs citigroup" as it is a "whistleblower vs the federal government decision on a tax exemption". Which means it was likely public knowledge and the actual detailed tax documents wouldn't have been part of the picture. Scratch my original curiosity.

What stood out for me here was what standing did the professor have to file the suit? If this suit is successful it should set a useful precedent to allow other whistleblowers to file similar suits.

New York State has a statute-- unique to New York, as far as I can tell-- which allows a whistleblower to file a suit against a defendant who underpaid New York State taxes. (The recovery goes to the State, but the plaintiff-whistleblower gets a cut.) Since New York tax law borrows from the federal IRC, an underpayment of federal taxes by a New York resident will almost always result in an underpayment of New York taxes. So the lawsuit here-- although aimed at a federal IRS ruling-- technically challenges only Citibank's New York State tax filings.