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Are Alleged Alter Egos, Successors in Interest and/or Transferees Entitled to Their Own Collection Due Process Rights Under Sections 6320 and 6330? Part 4

Posted on Dec. 3, 2018

Guest blogger Lavar Taylor continues his series on Collection Due Process and third parties. The series provides a deep dive into the jurisprudence of CDP cases and the rights of third parties to have an outlet to challenge the liens and levies made against these non-taxpayer parties held liable for the taxpayer’s obligations. Keith

This post looks at the question of how a putative alter ego, successor in interest or transferee of a taxpayer might pursue litigation in the Tax Court to raise the question of whether they are entitled to Collection Due Process (“CDP”) rights under §§6330 and 6320 of the Code, independent of the rights of the original taxpayer who incurred the liability. This discussion assumes, of course, that the IRS has the legal ability to pursue administrative collection action against a putative alter ego or successor in interest of the taxpayer, without first obtaining a judgment in District Court or without first making a separate assessment against the third party under section 6901.   As is explained in Part 3 of this series, such an assumption may not be correct.

This post also discusses how a putative alter ego/successor in interest/transferee might pursue litigation in the Tax Court to raise the issue discussed in Part 3, namely, whether the government can ever take administrative collection action against the putative alter ego/successor in interest/transferee in the absence of a District Court judgment holding that the putative alter ego/successor in interest/transferee is liable for some or all of the taxpayer’s tax liability.

  1. Existing Tax Court Jurisprudence Regarding Tax Court Jurisdiction

The Tax Court has stated on numerous occasions that a notice of determination under the CDP provisions is a taxpayer’s “ticket” to the Tax Court in CDP cases, see Weber v. Commissioner, 122 T.C. 258, 263 (2004), and that a failure to file a timely petition in response to a notice of determination requires the Court to dismiss the petition for lack of jurisdiction. Id. The Tax Court has also held that, in a situation where the IRS issued a notice of intent to levy under §6330 and the taxpayer failed to request a CDP hearing, the Court lacked jurisdiction because no CDP hearing had been requested and no notice of determination had been issued by the IRS. Offiler v. Commissioner, 114 T.C. 492 (2000).

Thus, in situations where the IRS takes levy action, whether against a taxpayer or against a putative alter ego/successor in interest/transferee, without first issuing a CDP notice of intent to levy under §6330, and the party against which levy action files a petition with the Tax Court to challenge the validity of the levy action as having been taken in violation of §6330, the IRS will likely argue that the Tax Court lacks jurisdiction over the petition. Indeed, that is exactly what the IRS did in the case in which we filed petition with the Tax Court on behalf of our client, an alleged alter ego/successor in interest, after the IRS levied on our client’s bank accounts without providing any notice or other advanced warning whatsoever to our client.

The IRS can take this position even if the failure to issue a §6330 notice of intent to levy is in clear violation of the law. Of course, even if the IRS were to “concede” that the Tax Court has jurisdiction over a petition in this situation, such a “concession” would not be binding on the Tax Court. The Court has an independent duty to determine whether it has jurisdiction over a petition, regardless of the positions taken by the parties. SECC Corp. v. Commissioner, 142 T.C. 225 (2014).

The Tax Court has never held that it lacks jurisdiction over a petition in this precise situation, however. In one case where the Tax Court concluded that the IRS improperly levied on a taxpayer’s bank account without first issuing a Notice of Intent to Levy, the Court held that it had jurisdiction over the case because the IRS made a de facto “determination” for purposes of section 6330 in response to which a petition was filed and thus formed the basis of the Court’s jurisdiction. See Chocallo v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2004-152, 87 T.C.M. (CCH) 1432 (2004). In Chocallo, the Court also held that it had the ability to order the IRS to refund to the Petitioner all funds which Respondent had improperly seized or levied from the taxpayer.

[Curiously, it is not possible to access the docket sheet in the Chocallo case electronically. The Tax Court’s website indicates that the case is filed under seal. This seems to me to be very strange.   I have a distinct memory, from a number of years ago, of reading another Memorandum Decision, the name of which I cannot recall, which seemingly was issued either in the Chocallo case or in another case involving facts that were very similar to the facts in Chocallo, prior to the date of 2004 Chocallo opinon. Since I have not able to locate any other Memorandum Decision with similar facts, it would be nice if the seal in Chocallo were somehow lifted. I would then be able to figure out whether my memory is correct about the existence of the other Memorandum Decision or instead be able to confirm that my memory has been completely corrupted from lead poisoning. (Most of my ill-spent youth was spent growing up on the site of a defunct lead-smelting plant in southern Illinois. I blame all of my mistakes on this fact.)]

The aspect of the Chocallo opinion dealing with the ability of the Tax Court to exercise jurisdiction in this situation has been discussed by the Tax Court in TC opinions, see Greene-Thapedi v. Commissioner, 126 T.C. 1, 9 n.13 (2006), and Bussell v. Commissioner, 130 T.C. 222, 245 (2008), but it has never been disavowed by the Court. Thus, it is an open question as to how the Tax Court would rule in a Reviewed Opinion or a TC Opinion by one Division of the Court on the issue of whether the Tax Court can acquire jurisdiction in the fact pattern that was faced by our clients. If the Tax Court does acquire jurisdiction, however, it would appear that it can exercise equitable powers to restore the status quo ante and order the IRS to undo the effects of an illegal levy. See Zapara v. Commissioner, 652 F.3d 1042 (9th Cir.2011), affirming 124 T.C. 223 (2005).

Notwithstanding this uncertainty, there is one step which practitioners can take to increase the chances that the Tax Court will hold that it has acquired jurisdiction in a case where the IRS has taken levy action against an alleged alter ego/successor in interest/transferee of the taxpayer without sending a separate notice of intent to levy to the alleged alter ego/successor in interest/transferee. That step is well illustrated by the opinion in Grover v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2007-176, 94 T.C.M. 28 (2007). In Grover, the taxpayer filed a petition asserting that the IRS had issued levies without first sending the taxpayer a §6330 Notice of Intent to Levy.   The IRS moved to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, based on the grounds that no Notice of Determination had ever been issued to the taxpayer. The IRS also noted that it had previously issued a §6330 Notice of Intent to Levy to the taxpayer well before the taxpayer filed a Tax Court petition.

In dismissing the petition for lack of jurisdiction, the Tax Court stated as follows:

The parties agree that respondent issued no notice of determination. Petitioner does not contend that respondent otherwise made any section 6330 determination. Cf. Chocallo v. Comm’r, T.C. Memo 2004-152 (describing an order denying a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction predicated on the nonissuance of any notice of determination, where the Court had found that the taxpayer had received a “‘determination’ within the contemplation of section 6330” on the basis of “various discrepancies” in the transcripts of account). But as suggested in Boyd v. Comm’r, supra at 303, even if we were to conclude that the notice of levy was “evidence of a concurrent section 6330 determination”, we would be required to dismiss this case for lack of jurisdiction because petitioner did not file his petition until November 17, 2006, which was more than 30 days after the October 9, 2006, notice of levy.

This quote makes clear that, if an alleged alter ego/successor in interest/transferee of a taxpayer wants to have a fighting chance to convince the Tax Court to take jurisdiction over a petition filed in a case where the IRS took levy action against an alleged alter ego/successor in interest/transferee of the taxpayer without first sending a separate §6330 Notice of Intent to Levy to the alleged alter ego/successor in interest/transferee, the alleged alter ego/successor in interest must file the petition within 30 days of the date of the initial IRS levy. In our now-settled Tax Court case, we made sure to file a petition within this 30 day period.

It is possible to argue that a petition filed under these circumstances is timely if filed within 30 days of the date on which the alleged alter ego/successor in interest/transferee receives notice of the levy action. But the prudent course of action is to file a petition within 30 days of the date of the initial levy action if possible.

Even then, it is possible that the Tax Court will end up holding that it lacks jurisdiction in this situation. In our case, we argued in the alternative that, even if the Tax Court lacks jurisdiction in this situation because there was no “determination,” the Tax Court can dismiss the petition for lack of jurisdiction in a way that makes clear that the IRS’s levy action was illegal. I now turn to those alternative arguments.

  1. Alternative Arguments- Getting the Case Dismissed for Lack of Jurisdiction for the Right Reasons

The Tax Court has issued opinions in a number of cases in which taxpayers filed petitions claiming that the IRS had failed to send a §6330 Notice of Intent to Levy to the taxpayer’s last known address before taking levy action. In these situations, the Tax Court has dismissed the petition based on lack of jurisdiction due to the failure of the IRS to send a valid notice of intent to levy prior to taking levy action. See, e.g., Buffano v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2007-32, 93 T.C.M. (CCH) 901 (2007). This approach is consistent with the Tax Court’s jurisprudence involving the failure of the IRS to issue a notice of deficiency to a taxpayer’s last known address. See King v. Commissioner, 88 T.C. 1042 (1987), aff’d,  857 F.2d 676 (9th Cir. 1988).

The Ninth Circuit has held that a failure of the Tax Court to explain the reasons for dismissing a petition for lack of jurisdiction where a taxpayer has alleged that the IRS failed to send a notice of deficiency to the taxpayer’s last known address is legal error. See Rosewood Hotel, Inc. v. Commissioner, 275 F.2d 786 (9th Cir. 1960).

In our now-settled case, we argued in the alternative that, if the Tax Court lacked jurisdiction over our petition, it should dismiss the petition for lack of jurisdiction on the grounds that the IRS was required to issue a separate §6330 Notice of Intent to Levy to our client prior to taking levy action and had failed to do so.   We cited to Rosewood and other case law involving for the proposition that the Court could not simply dismiss the petition for lack of jurisdiction without explanation in the face of an argument that the IRS had violated the law by levying on our client’s property without first issuing our client a separate §6330 Notice of Intent to Levy

We also argued in the alternative that the Tax Court should dismiss the petition for lack of jurisdiction on the grounds that the IRS could not pursue levy action at all against our client, because the Code does not permit collection action against an alleged alter ego/successor in interest/transferee in the absence of a judgment (or separate assessment) against the alleged alter ego/successor in interest/transferee. In essence, we raised the argument discussed in Part 3 of this series of blog posts, based on the fact that the IRS could not take administrative collection action against alleged transferees of a taxpayer prior to the enactment of the predecessor to what is now section 6901 of the Code, as another alternative argument.

In raising these arguments, however, we had to deal with the case of Adolphson v. Commissioner, 842 F. 3d 478 (7th Cir. 2016). Adolphson held that the Tax Court erred in cases such as Buffano v. Commissioner, supra, when the Court dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction while explaining that Respondent had failed to issue the Notice of Determination to the petitioner’s last known address. The Seventh Circuit held that this latter topic should not have been addressed at all when the Court dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction. Instead, per the Seventh Circuit, the Tax Court should have just dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction, without further comment.

Ironically, the Seventh Circuit, in reaching its conclusion, violated the very rule which it pronounced in its own opinion. The Seventh Circuit discussed the IRS’s failure to send the Notice of Determination to the petitioner’s “last known address” at length. Aside from the Seventh Circuit’s failure to adhere to its own holding in its opinion, my biggest concern about the Seventh Circuit’s holding is that it permits the IRS to unilaterally deprive taxpayers, along with putative alter egos/successors in interest, of the ability to challenge levy action in the Tax Court. This ruling forces parties to vindicate their CDP rights in District Court, a forum that, since 2006, has no familiarity whatsoever with these rights. The notion that only District Courts, and not the Tax Court, can decide the scope of the Tax Court’s jurisdiction in CDP cases where the IRS refuses or fails to issue a §6330 Notice of Intent to Levy seems to me to be utterly absurd and contrary to Congressional intent.

When we settled our case, we deprived the Tax Court of the opportunity to rule on whether it will continue to follow its prior holding in Buffano in cases which are not appealable to the Seventh Circuit. The Tax Court will face that issue in the not too distant future, and the Tax Court’s holding in that case will impact the ability of alleged alter egos/successors in interest to obtain a dismissal of a petition based on lack of jurisdiction with a discussion and analysis by the Tax Court of the IRS’s alleged procedural irregularities.

If the Tax Court holds that it lacks jurisdiction in these types of cases and, in doing so, follows the holding of the Seventh Circuit in Adolphson, alleged alter egos/successors in interest will be forced to litigate in District Court the question of whether they are entitled to their own independent CDP rights.

This concludes Part 4 of this series. Part 5 of this series will address how these issues can be raised in District Court litigation. Part 5 will also discuss why assertions by the IRS of “nominee” status require a different analysis regarding the potential applicability of the CDP procedures than assertions by the IRS of “alter ego,” “successor in interest” or “transferee” status.   I will also explain why virtually all “nominee” notices of federal tax lien that have been filed by the IRS, along with some “transferee” notices of federal tax lien filed by the IRS, are likely improper in one important respect, to the legal detriment of most, if not all of the persons/entities against whom/which these lien notices have been filed.

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