On October 23, 2014, Judge Mulroy, a Cook County Circuit Court judge, ruled against Schad, Diamond & Shedden, P.C. ("Diamond") in one of the hundreds of qui tam tax cases that Diamond currently has pending before him.

During a two-day bench trial in August, National Business Furniture's financial officers said they had relied on a completed Illinois Department of Revenue audit in determining that the company's practice of not collecting use tax on the charges was consistent with Illinois law and accompanying regulation. Unfortunately, this is one of numerous cases brought by Diamond and still pending in which the taxpayer relied on a previous audit of the Department's when determining whether its shipping and handling charges were subject to tax.

What makes these cases even more egregious is that you have the Department of Revenue issuing taxpayer supportive statements arguing that "it is unfair to force the taxpayer to endure an expensive round of civil litigation brought by a private party who has no expertise in state tax law."

Hopefully this decision is a sign of taxpayer friendly holdings to come.