American tax authorities are examining Facebook’s transfer of intellectual property from the US to subsidiaries in Ireland.

Court papers filed today in San Francisco detail US authorities moves to force the company to produce documents to help with the tax probe.

The US Justice Department filed a lawsuit on Wednesday at a federal court in San Francisco in an effort to enforce Internal Revenue Service (IRS) summonses served on Facebook.

The case centres on legal rights that were transferred from Facebook in the US to its companies in Ireland. The IRS claims valuations of the assets at the time, which were relevant to Facebook’s US tax bill, were “problematic.”

The documents being sought relate to an IRS examination of Facebook’s tax liability for 2010.

Online Editors