A. Returns shall be preserved for a period of three years from the date of filing with the finance director, after which time the finance director may order them destroyed.

B. Except in accordance with a court order or as otherwise provided by law, the city and its agents and employees shall not divulge or make known in any way information obtained from any investigation conducted by the finance department or disclosed in any application, report, return or any other document kept, filed or maintained under the provisions of this chapter except such information as is displayed on the tax license and license application. The persons charged with the custody of such applications, reports, returns or other documents shall not be required to produce any of them or evidence of anything contained therein in any action or proceeding in any court, except on behalf of the finance director in an action or proceeding under the provisions of this chapter to which the finance director or the city is a party or on behalf of any party to any action or proceeding under the provisions of this chapter when the report of facts shown thereby is directly involved in such action or proceeding, in either of which events, the court may require the production of so much of the reports or of the facts shown thereby as are pertinent to the action or proceeding.

C. Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the delivery to the taxpayer or a duly authorized representative thereof of a copy of any application, report, return or any other document kept, filed or maintained in connection with such person's tax liability. Copies of such documents may be certified by the finance director and when so certified shall be evidence equal with the original documents and may be received as evidence of their contents.

D. Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the publication of statistics so classified as to prevent the identification of particular reports or returns and contents thereof, or the inspection of any documents by the city attorney or other official representatives of the city.

E. Notwithstanding the provisions of this section, the finance director may furnish to the taxing officials of the state or its political subdivisions, any other state or its political subdivisions or the United States any information contained in any application, report, return or any other document if the recipient jurisdiction agrees with the finance director to grant similar privileges to the city and if such information is to be used by the jurisdiction only for tax related purposes. (Ord. 1993-7 Exh. B (part))