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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 19–930
_________________
CIC SERVICES, LLC, PETITIONER
v.
INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the sixth circuit
[May 17, 2021]
Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the
Court.
The Anti-Injunction Act, 26 U. S. C.
§7421(a), bars any “suit for the purpose of restraining the
assessment or collection of any tax.” The question here is whether
the Act prohibits a suit seeking to set aside an information-
reporting requirement that is backed by both civil tax penalties
and criminal penalties. We hold that the Act does not preclude the
suit.
I
Americans have never had much enthusiasm for
paying taxes. The Nation’s first income taxes—adopted to finance
the Civil War—met with considerable (one might even say “taxing”)
legal resistance. See Hickman & Kerska, Restoring the Lost
Anti-Injunction Act, 103 Va. L. Rev. 1683, 1723–1725 (2017). Some
taxpayers, alleging the taxes illegal, sought to enjoin collection
efforts. And some courts granted the requested relief. See,
e.g.,
Roback v.
Taylor, 20 F. Cas. 852, 854
(No. 11,877) (CC SD Ohio 1866);
Bank for Savings v.
Collector, 3 Wall. 495 (1866). Those rulings disrupted the
flow of revenue to the Federal Government. As one late-19th century
treatise writer described the problem, “improvident employment of
the writ of injunction” threatened to “seriously embarrass”
tax-dependent “operations of the government.” T. Cooley, Law of
Taxation 536–537 (2d ed. 1886).
Congress responded by enacting the
Anti-Injunction Act. See Act of Mar. 2, 1867, §10, 14Stat. 475. In
its current form (differing little from the original), the Act
provides: “[N]o suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment
or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any
person.” 26 U. S. C. §7421(a). The Act, we have stated,
“protects the [Federal] Government’s ability to collect a
consistent stream of revenue, by barring litigation to enjoin or
otherwise obstruct the collection of taxes.”
National Federation
of Independent Business v.
Sebelius,
567 U.S.
519, 543 (2012) (
NFIB). Because of the Act, a person can
typically challenge a federal tax only after he pays it, by suing
for a refund. See
ibid.
In an ordinary Anti-Injunction Act case, that
short primer on the statute would naturally bring us to a
description of the tax under dispute. But describing the tax
implicated here will have to wait. For that tax—the thing that
raises the Anti-Injunction Act question—comes into play only at the
back end of a complex information-reporting scheme. The reporting
scheme itself is where we must begin.
As every taxpayer knows, the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) has broad power to require the submission of tax-
related information that it believes helpful in assessing and
collecting taxes. See §6011(a). Those reporting rules may apply not
just to taxpayers but also to “material advisors”—individuals or
entities that earn income from providing taxpayers with certain
kinds of “aid, assistance, or advice.” §6111(b)(1)(A); see
§6111(a). This case starts with requirements that taxpayers and
material advisors provide detailed information about what the
Internal Revenue Code calls “reportable transaction[s].”
§6707A(c)(1). The Code describes those transactions simply as ones
that “hav[e] a potential for tax avoidance or evasion.”
Ibid. Rather than give further specifics, the Code delegates
to the Secretary of the Treasury, acting through the IRS, the task
of identifying particular transactions with the requisite risk of
tax abuse. See §§6011, 6707A(c)(1).
Using that authority, the IRS determined that
so-called micro-captive transactions must be reported because of
their potential for tax evasion. A micro-captive transaction is
typically an insurance agreement between a parent company and a
“captive” insurer under its control. The Code provides the parties
to such an agreement with tax advantages. The insured party can
deduct its premium payments as business expenses. See §162(a). And
the insurer can exclude up to $2.2 million of those premiums from
its own taxable income, under a tax break for small insurance
companies. See §831(b). The result is that the money does not get
taxed at all. That much, for better or worse, is a congressional
choice. But no tax benefit should accrue if the money is not really
for insurance—if the insurance contract is a sham, which the
affiliated companies have entered into only to escape tax
liability. And according to the IRS, some micro-captive
transactions are of that kind. So the IRS issued Notice 2016–66
identifying certain micro-captive agreements as reportable
transactions. See 2016–47 Cum. Bull. 745. That Notice compels
taxpayers and material advisors associated with such an agreement
to (among other things) “describe the transaction in sufficient
detail for the IRS to be able to understand [its] tax structure.”
Id., at 748. With that information, the IRS can check for
facts—like coverage for an “implausible risk” or premiums that
“significantly exceed” prevailing rates—suggesting that the
taxpayer is not entitled to the tax benefit it claims.
Id.,
at 745–746.
Noncompliance with Notice 2016–66 subjects a
taxpayer or material advisor to stiff penalties—at last bringing us
to the tax involved in this case, as well as to non-tax criminal
consequences. By statutory provision, all failures to supply
required information on reportable transactions, including the
micro-captive transactions specified in the Notice, are punishable
by civil monetary penalties—$50,000 for advisors and up to that
amount (depending on the amount of tax gain realized) for
taxpayers. See §§6707(b), 6707A(b). In addition, an advisor may
incur a daily $10,000 penalty for failing to furnish, on request, a
list of the people it advised on a reportable transaction. See
§§6708(a), 6112(a). And critically here, all those penalties are
“deemed” to be “tax[es]” for purposes of the Code—including the
Anti- Injunction Act. §6671(a). So, again, the civil penalties for
violating Notice 2016–66 are
tax penalties, and must be
treated as such. But no sooner do we find the tax appended to the
Notice’s reporting scheme than we encounter something else. Under
the Code, any person who “willfully” breaches an IRS reporting
requirement is also subject to criminal penalties. §7203. Such a
violation is a misdemeanor, punishable by fines and up to one year
in prison. And, unsurprisingly, that criminal liability is not
“deemed” a tax.
This suit challenges the lawfulness of Notice
2016–66. The petitioner is CIC Services, a material advisor to
taxpayers participating in microcaptive transactions. It brought
this action before the Notice’s first reporting date, rather than
after a reporting violation, let alone payment of penalty. (As far
as we know, CIC has still not committed a violation, instead
complying with the Notice while pressing this suit.) CIC’s
complaint mainly asserts that the IRS violated the Administrative
Procedure Act (APA) by issuing the Notice without
notice-and-comment procedures. The complaint also alleges that the
Notice is arbitrary and capricious under the APA because it imposes
new reporting requirements without proven need. So the complaint
asks the court to “set[ ] aside IRS Notice 2016–66”—more
specifically, to “enjoin the enforcement of Notice 2016–66 as an
unlawful IRS rule” and to “declar[e] that Notice 2016–66 is
unlawful.” Complaint in No. 17–CV–110 (ED Tenn., Mar. 27, 2017),
Doc. 1, pp. 2, 16 (Complaint).
But the suit has not yet proceeded to the
merits. The Government moved to dismiss the action based on the
Anti-Injunction Act, arguing that CIC’s “requested relief would
prevent the IRS from assessing a tax penalty against material
advisors” that disregard the Notice’s reporting requirements.
Motion to Dismiss in No. 17–cv–110 (ED Tenn., May 30, 2017), Doc.
25–1, p. 9. In the Government’s view, the way for CIC to bring its
claims is to disobey the Notice and then sue for a refund of any
resulting tax penalty. The District Court agreed. It reasoned that
CIC’s suit sought “to restrain the IRS’s assessment or collection”
of the tax penalty that could be imposed for noncompliance. 2017 WL
5015510, *4 (ED Tenn., Nov. 2, 2017). The Court of Appeals for the
Sixth Circuit affirmed in a divided decision. According to the
majority, CIC’s suit would “restrain (indeed eliminate)” the tax
penalty by “invalidat[ing] the Notice, which is [that tax’s] entire
basis.” 925 F.3d 247, 255 (2019). Judge Nalbandian dissented.
“[T]his is not,” he wrote, “a dispute over taxes”: “[A] suit to
enjoin the enforcement of a
reporting requirement is not”
one to restrain a tax’s collection.
Id., at 259–260. Under
the majority’s view, the dissent also objected, CIC could challenge
the reporting scheme only by “violat[ing] the law” and risking
“criminal prosecution.”
Id., at 263. The Sixth Circuit
denied a petition for rehearing en banc, over a dissent from seven
judges.
We granted certiorari, 590 U. S. ___
(2020), and now reverse.
II
A
The issue here, most concretely stated, is
whether the Anti-Injunction Act bars CIC’s suit complaining that
Notice 2016–66’s reporting requirements violate the APA. Once
again, the Anti-Injunction Act provides, with exceptions not
relevant here, that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the
assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any
court by any person.” §7421(a). If CIC’s suit is not for that
purpose, it can go forward. If the suit is for that purpose, it
must be dismissed. In that event, CIC could contest the legality of
the reporting rules only by violating them and suing for a refund
of a later tax penalty.
If that downstream tax penalty did not exist,
this case would be a cinch: The Anti-Injunction Act would not apply
and the suit could proceed. A reporting requirement is not a tax;
and a suit brought to set aside such a rule is not one to enjoin a
tax’s assessment or collection. That is so even if the reporting
rule will help the IRS bring in future tax revenue—here, by
identifying sham insurance transactions. See
supra, at 3. We
said as much in
Direct Marketing Assn. v.
Brohl, 575
U.S. 1 (2015).[
1] In that case,
out-of-state retailers wanted to invalidate a Colorado law
requiring them to report to the State’s Department of Revenue any
sale to a state resident on which they had not collected tax. We
allowed the suit to proceed, explaining that a suit about reporting
requirements is not about the “assessment” or “collection” of
taxes.
Id., at 9–10. “Information gathering,” we stated, is
“a phase of tax administration procedure that occurs before
assessment [or] collection.”
Id., at 8. And it did not
matter that the reporting requirements would “facilitate collection
of taxes”—there, by identifying residents who owed sales taxes.
Id., at 12. The statute’s limit on injunctions, we said, is
“not keyed to all activities that may improve a State’s ability to
assess and collect taxes.”
Id., at 11. It is instead “keyed
to the acts of assessment [and] collection themselves.”
Id.,
at 12. That means a suit directed at ordinary reporting duties can
go forward, unimpeded by the Anti-Injunction Act. On this much,
even the Government agrees. See Brief for Respondents 27.
The complication here is that Notice 2016–66’s
reporting obligations (unlike those in
Direct Marketing) are
backed up by a statutory tax penalty. As earlier described, the
Code provides that a taxpayer who violates a demand for information
about a reportable transaction—including those specified in the
Notice—is subject to civil monetary penalties. See
supra, at
3–4. And the Code “deem[s]” those civil penalties to be “tax[es]”
as the Anti-Injunction Act uses that term. §6671(a); see
NFIB, 567 U. S., at 544 (“Congress can, of course,”
direct that a penalty “be treated as a tax for purposes of the
AntiInjunction Act”). The question thus becomes whether that added
tax penalty changes the analysis. Does its presence—as a sanction
for flouting the Notice—mean that CIC’s suit is, as the
Anti-Injunction Act provides, “for the purpose of restraining the
assessment or collection of any tax”?
In considering a “suit[’s] purpose,” we inquire
not into a taxpayer’s subjective motive, but into the action’s
objective aim—essentially, the relief the suit requests. The
parties agree on that interpretation, as both consistent with the
Act’s ordinary meaning and necessary for the Act’s administration.
See Brief for Respondents 40; Reply Brief 4; Tr. of Oral Arg. 15,
34. The purpose of a measure is “the end or aim to which [it] is
directed.” N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English
Language (rev. ed. 1844); see Webster’s Third New International
Dictionary 1847 (1976). And in this context, that aim is not best
assessed by probing an individual taxpayer’s innermost reasons for
suing. Down that path lies too much potential for circumventing the
Act. Instead, this Court has looked to the face of the taxpayer’s
complaint. See,
e.g.,
Bob Jones Univ. v.
Simon,
416 U.S.
725, 738 (1974). We have asked about what the Government here
calls “the substance of the suit”—the claims brought and injuries
alleged—to determine the suit’s object. Brief for Respondents 40.
And most especially, we have looked to the “relief requested”—the
thing sought to be enjoined.
Alexander v.
“Americans
United” Inc.,
416 U.S.
752, 761 (1974); see
Bob Jones, 416 U. S., at 732
(“[A] suit seeking [injunctive] relief ” against a tax “falls
squarely within the literal scope of the Act”). The Anti-
Injunction Act kicks in when the target of a requested injunction
is a tax obligation—or stated in the Act’s language, when that
injunction runs against the “collection or assessment of [a]
tax.”
It is in characterizing the purpose of CIC’s
suit that the parties’ disagreement emerges. Recall that CIC’s
complaint avers that Notice 2016–66 violates the APA. See
supra, at 4–5. And the complaint describes the relief
requested as “setting aside IRS Notice 2016–66,” “enjoin[ing] the
enforcement of Notice 2016–66 as an unlawful IRS rule,” and
“declaring that Notice 2016–66 is unlawful.” Complaint 2, 16.
According to CIC, all of that reveals the suit’s aim as
invalidating the Notice and thereby eliminating its onerous
reporting requirements—not as blocking the downstream tax penalty
that may sanction the Notice’s breach. See Reply Brief 6. By
contrast, the Government contends that the suit’s purpose is to
stop the collection of the tax itself. See Brief for Respondents
12. In making that claim, the Government picks up on the word
“enforcement” in CIC’s request for relief: Because the Notice is
enforced through tax penalties, the Government claims, “enjoin[ing]
the [Notice’s] enforcement,” as CIC wants, means preventing the IRS
from collecting taxes.
Id., at 23, 37–38. And even putting
aside that word, the Government insists that there is no real
difference between a suit to invalidate the Notice and one to
preclude the tax penalty. See
id., at 38; Tr. of Oral Arg.
54–56. Avoiding the burdens of compliance with the Notice and
avoiding the tax that sanctions noncompliance, the Government
asserts, are “two sides of the same coin.” Brief for Respondents
37. The Government thus suggests that by framing this suit as an
attack on the Notice, CIC is trying to “eva[de] the Anti-Injunction
Act through artful pleading.”
Id., at 38.
To begin with, we agree with CIC’s reading of
its complaint. The complaint contests the legality of Notice
2016–66, not of the statutory tax penalty that serves as one way to
enforce it. CIC alleges that the Notice is procedurally and
substantively flawed; it brings no legal claim against the separate
statutory tax. And CIC’s complaint asks for injunctive relief from
the Notice’s reporting rules, not from any impending or eventual
tax obligation. Contra the Government’s view, a request in an APA
action to “enjoin the enforcement” of an IRS reporting rule is most
naturally understood as a request to “set aside” that rule (as the
complaint elsewhere says), not to block the application of a
penalty that might be imposed for some yet-to-happen violation. 5
U. S. C. §706; Complaint 2, 9, 16. Indeed, CIC’s
complaint barely mentions that penalty. The complaint, and
particularly its request for relief, sets out this suit’s purpose
as enjoining the Notice.
And we reject the Government’s argument that an
injunction against the Notice is the same as one against the tax
penalty—just “two sides of the same coin.” Brief for Respondents
37. If that view were right, of course, no amount of artful
pleading would avail: CIC’s suit targeting the Notice would then in
fact target the tax, and the Anti- Injunction Act would apply. But
the Government’s take is wrong. Three aspects of the regulatory
scheme here, taken in combination, refute the idea that this is a
tax action in disguise. They show that in addressing Notice
2016–66, this suit (and any resulting injunction) addresses
something other than the tax penalty helping to back it up.
First, the Notice imposes affirmative reporting
obligations, inflicting costs separate and apart from the statutory
tax penalty. As described earlier, the Notice levies no tax.
Rather, it compels taxpayers and their material advisors to collect
and submit detailed information about micro-captive transactions
and their participants. See
supra, at 3. And obeying that
mandate is likely to involve significant time and expense. Here,
for example, CIC estimates that it will have to spend “hundreds of
hours of labor and in excess of $60,000 per year” to comply with
the Notice. See Complaint ¶40. Costs of that kind may well exceed,
or even dwarf, the tax penalties for a violation. So in bringing
this suit, CIC challenges a regulatory mandate that (1) is not a
tax and (2) entails compliance costs whose amount is not tied to,
and often goes beyond, any tax. Simply stated, this suit attempts
to get out from under the (non-tax) burdens of a (non-tax)
reporting obligation. Of course, if the suit succeeds, CIC will
never have to worry about the tax penalty; once the reporting duty
disappears, the sanction becomes irrelevant. But that is the suit’s
after-effect, not its substance. The suit still targets the
reporting mandates—the independently onerous reporting mandates—of
the Notice itself.
Second and relatedly, the Notice’s reporting
rule and the statutory tax penalty are several steps removed from
each other. Consider what has to happen before CIC owes taxes to
the IRS. To start, CIC has to withhold required information about a
micro-captive transaction that the Notice covers. (And note, for
whatever it is worth, that CIC disclaims any intent to do so while
the Notice remains the law. See Brief for Petitioner 29.) Next, the
IRS must determine (often no small matter) that a violation of the
Notice has in fact occurred. And finally, the IRS must make
the—entirely discretionary—decision to impose a tax penalty. See
§6707A(d). If and only if all those things occur does tax liability
attach. That threefold contingency matters in assessing whether the
Anti-Injunction Act applies. Even the Government concedes that when
there is “too attenuated a chain of connection” between an upstream
duty and a “downstream tax,” a court should not view a suit
challenging the duty as aiming to “restrain the assessment or
collection of a tax.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 38–39.[
2] That principle favors CIC here. CIC stands
nowhere near the cusp of tax liability: Between the upstream Notice
and the downstream tax, the river runs long. So it is again hard to
characterize this suit’s purpose as enjoining a tax.
Third, violation of the Notice is punishable not
only by a tax, but by separate criminal penalties. As noted above,
any “[w]illful failure” to comply with the Notice’s reporting rules
can lead to as much as a year in prison. §7203; see
supra,
at 3–4. That fact clinches the case for treating a suit brought to
set aside the Notice as different from one brought to restrain its
back-up tax. For the existence of criminal penalties explains why
an entity like CIC must bring an action in just this form, framing
its requested relief in just this way. Recall what the Government
would have such a party do: disobey the Notice, pay a resulting tax
penalty, and then bring a refund suit. See Brief for Respondents
16–17;
supra, at 5. That approach—not the Anti-Injunction
Act’s familiar pay-now-sue-later procedure, but one with
lawbreaking at the start—subjects the party to criminal
punishment.[
3] And that is not
the kind of thing an ordinary person risks, even to contest the
most burdensome regulation. So the criminal penalties here
practically necessitate a pre-enforcement, rather than a refund,
suit—if there is to be a suit at all. And so too, those penalties
necessitate a suit aimed at eliminating the Notice, rather than the
statutory tax penalty. Only an injunction against the Notice gives
the taxpayer or advisor what it wants: relief from the obligation
to report transactions. An injunction against the tax penalty would
not do so. Because such an injunction would leave both the
reporting duty and the criminal penalty untouched, the taxpayer or
advisor would still have to accede to the Notice’s demands on pain
of prison time. Small wonder that CIC’s complaint asks for an
injunction against the Notice, not one against the tax penalty
helping to enforce it. Contrary to the Government’s assertion,
those injunctions are not two sides of one coin.
For all these reasons, the purpose of CIC’s suit
is not to “restrain[ ] the assessment or collection of [a] tax.”
§7421(a). The complaint, and particularly the relief sought,
targets the Notice’s reporting rule, asking that it be set aside as
a violation of the APA. And nothing in that request smacks of
artful pleading. To the contrary. That the Notice imposes an
affirmative duty independent of the tax, entailing its own
substantial costs; that the Notice and tax may remain forever
divorced, depending on both CIC’s and the IRS’s choices; that not
only the tax but also criminal penalties backstop the Notice—these
facts, when combined, readily explain why CIC’s suit targets the
upstream reporting mandate, not the downstream tax. And because
that is the suit’s aim, the Anti-Injunction Act imposes no bar.
B
The Government worries that a ruling for CIC
will enfeeble the Anti-Injunction Act. If CIC can bring this suit
now, the Government claims, a wave of pre-enforcement actions will
follow. Canny plaintiffs will assert non-tax reasons (including
objections to regulatory demands) for contesting the imposition of
taxes. See Brief for Respondents 32, 38. And in that way, taxpayers
will obtain just what the Anti- Injunction Act is meant to
foreclose—orders “preemptively shield[ing]” their activities or
transactions from “tax consequences.”
Id., at 13. More and
more, the Government warns, tax litigation will shift from refund
actions to pre-enforcement suits. And the IRS’s ability to assess
and collect taxes will decline in proportion.
The Government, however, much overstates the
possible consequences of today’s ruling. As we have explained, this
suit falls outside the Anti-Injunction Act because the injunction
it requests does not run against a tax at all. See
supra, at
9–13. The suit contests, and seeks relief from, a separate legal
mandate; the tax appears on the scene—as criminal penalties do
too—only to sanction that mandate’s violation. Or as Judge
Nalbandian put the point below: “[T]his is not a dispute over
taxes.” 925 F. 3d, at 259; see
supra, at 5. By
contrast, the kind of case the Government invokes in making its
floodgates claim is a conflict over taxes, whether on earning
income, or selling stock, or entering into a business transaction.
In such a case, the legal rule at issue is a tax provision. The tax
does not backstop the violation of another law that independently
prohibits or commands an action. Instead, the tax imposes a cost on
perfectly legal behavior. So there is no target for an injunction
other than the command to pay the tax; there is no non-tax legal
obligation to restrain. Given that fact, the Anti-Injunction Act
bars pre-enforcement review, prohibiting a taxpayer from bringing
(as the Government fears) a “preemptive[ ]” suit to foreclose tax
liability. Brief for Respondents 13. And it does so always—whatever
the taxpayer’s subjective reason for contesting the tax at issue.
If the dispute is about a tax rule—as it is in the run-of-the-mine
suits the Government raises—the sole recourse is to pay the tax and
seek a refund.
That is just as true when the tax in question is
a so-called regulatory tax—that is, a tax designed mainly to
influence private conduct, rather than to raise revenue. This Court
has long since “abandoned the view that brightline distinctions
exist between regulatory and revenueraising taxes.”
Bob
Jones, 416 U. S., at 743, n. 17; see
id., at
741, n. 12;
Sonzinsky v.
United States,
300 U.S.
506, 513 (1937) (“Every tax is in some measure regulatory”).
And for just as long, we have rejected the view that regulatory tax
cases have a special pass from the Anti-Injunction Act. A century
ago, the Court in
Bailey v.
George,
259 U.S.
16 (1922), held that the Act barred a pre-enforcement suit
challenging a tax intended to discourage the (then lawful) use of
child labor. Some 50 years later, the Court in
Bob Jones and
Americans United similarly held that the Act barred pre-
enforcement suits challenging IRS decisions to revoke the
tax-exempt status of entities that had engaged in, respectively,
discriminatory conduct and lobbying activity—conduct that was legal
but disfavored for tax purposes. See 416 U. S., at 735; 416
U. S., at 755. In doing so, the Court made clear that the
plaintiffs’ reasons for suing did not matter: It was, for example,
irrelevant that Bob Jones University objected to the IRS’s “attempt
to regulate the admissions policies of private universities.” 416
U. S., at 739. Nor did it matter that the tax ruling was in
truth an effort to change those policies. Regardless of those
facts, the suits sought to prevent the levying of taxes, and so
could not go forward. The Anti-Injunction Act, we said then and say
again now, draws no distinction between regulatory and revenue-
raising tax rules. It applies whenever a suit calls for enjoining
the IRS’s assessment and collection of taxes—of whatever kind.
What sets this suit apart is that it no more
targets a regulatory tax than a revenue-raising one. One last time:
CIC’s action challenges, in both its substantive allegations and
its request for an injunction, a regulatory mandate—a reporting
requirement—separate from any tax. Or said otherwise, the suit
targets not a regulatory tax, but instead a regulation that is not
a tax. Here, the tax functions, alongside criminal penalties, only
as a sanction for noncompliance with the reporting obligation. Had
Congress, or the IRS acting through a delegation, imposed a tax on
micro-captive transactions themselves—and had CIC then brought a
pre-enforcement suit to prevent the IRS from applying that tax—the
Anti-Injunction Act would have kicked in. Then, CIC would have had
to pay the tax and seek a refund. But Congress and the IRS chose a
different path. They imposed a non-tax, reporting obligation to
address their concerns about micro-captive agreements. And by that
choice, they took suits to enjoin their regulatory response outside
the Anti-Injunction Act’s domain.
III
CIC’s suit aims to enjoin a standalone
reporting requirement, whose violation may result in both tax
penalties and criminal punishment. That is not a suit “for the
purpose of restraining the [IRS’s] assessment or collection” of a
tax, and so does not trigger the AntiInjunction Act. We reverse the
judgment below and remand the case for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.