Tim Barfield, Executive Counsel at the Louisiana Department of Revenue, is not interested in setting policy through litigation. He is also not a fan of policy-setting litigation that doesn't get initiated by the Department, such as qui tam cases, where a relator sues a corporate taxpayer for filing false tax claims against the government.  

Barfield's comments were part of a larger interview in which he spoke candidly to Walt Nagel, Don Griswold, and Jeremy Abrams, all with Crowell and Moring's state tax team, about tax incentives, and major initiatives facing the revenue department.

"I'm not a big fan of qui tam,"  Barfield said. "I understand that it's one of those things that may sound very appealing, but I've been on the other side of those in healthcare-seeing how they operate and seeing how one disgruntled employee can abuse the process. So, in Louisiana if you want to talk about qui tams, I wouldn't be a big fan of qui tams," he said.

"From a standpoint of class actions, we do have that St. Martin case, but we really haven't seen a lot of that. I really don't worry about that too much. We do see a lot of 'strains' of refund requests where there will be one advisor out there who comes up with a novel idea," he said.

And all of a sudden they have a number of clients around the state pursuing that, he explained. So it may not be a class action, but it operates a lot like that. "And that's kind of the American way, I suppose?"

Check out the complete interview with Barfield here.

In other developments…

A Summary of Selected State Reports on Fiscal/Economic Impacts of Immigrants, by the National Conference of State Legislatures

More Details Released on North Carolina Compromise Plan, by the Tax Foundation

State Tax Quarterly Insights: April - June 2013, by PwC

Compiled by Priya D. Nair

Follow us on Twitter at:  @BBNATax
Join BNA's State Tax Group on LinkedIn here.