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Overpayment Jurisdiction in Partnership Cases; Orders vs. Opinions – Designated Orders: December 10 – 14, 2018

Posted on Jan. 24, 2019

Professor Patrick Thomas from Notre Dame brings us this week’s designated order post. The first case he discusses raises and issue Professor Thomas and I first discussed a couple of years ago when he had a Tax Court case in which the petitioner expected a refund. He brought Rule 260 to my attention. I subsequently had my own clinic case with an unpaid refund. I pointed out the rule to the IRS attorney when I asked whether they objected to the motion I was preparing to file. The attorney asked that I hold off on filing the motion and I did. That decision led to a little tension with my client who wanted me to push harder but I felt that the attorney would work hard to get the refund issued based on her promise. She did. Only a small percentage of Tax Court cases result in a refund but a high percentage of those cases probably result in slow delivery of the refund. Understanding Rule 260 can be helpful.

In addition to introducing us to Rule 260, this post also questions the use of an order to dispose of a case that seems like a natural one for a decision. I cannot say why an order rather than opinion was used and hope that maybe some former Tax Court clerks who subscribe might be able to shed light on this decision in the comment section. Keith

The Tax Court picked up the pace this week. In addition to the cases detailed below, Judge Carluzzo issued a quick reminder that, under Craig v. Commissioner, a document entitled a “Decision Letter” may instead be treated as a Notice of Determination if, in fact, the facts warrant; Judge Armen disposed of a mooted motion for reconsideration; and Judge Halpern issued a cryptic order in a Whistleblower case that struck his order in the same case the prior week (which Caleb Smith covered for us previously).

Docket No. 21946-09, Greenteam Materials Recovery Facility PN v. C.I.R. (Order Here)

This case provides two important lessons. First, failing to use the Court’s formal procedures under Rule 260 for enforcement of an overpayment may result in a tongue lashing. Second, and more importantly, there is significant dispute regarding whether the Court may order refunds for partners that result from decisions in a partnership level proceeding.

The Court issued its decision in this case last year. In Judge Holmes’ view, the decision was largely favorable to Petitioners, and according to Petitioner’s counsel, resulted in a substantial refund for the partners in one tax year (along with some smaller deficiencies in others).

The Service issued computational adjustments to the partners for those deficiency years, but did not issue the refunds for the other year. Instead, the Service told the partners to sue for a refund in District Court or the Court of Federal Claims. So, Petitioner’s counsel sent a letter to the Tax Court, asking the Court to force the Service to issue the refund.

I’ve certainly been in a similar situation before. The Court issued a decision for my client, found an overpayment, and ordered a refund. Months came and went. Still no refund. Fortunately, the Tax Court Rules provide for a remedy: specifically, Tax Court Rule 260. In ordinary deficiency cases, the Court may order Respondent to issue a refund under Rule 260. Presumably, the Court could use its contempt power under section 7456(c) if the Service continued to refuse.

Rule 260 has a few hoops to jump through. First, under Rule 260(a)(2), Petitioner may not commence a Rule 260 proceeding until 120 days have lapsed since the decision became final under section 7481(a), which for non-appealed cases means 90 days after the decision is entered. So at least 210 days from the decision must elapse before starting down this path. The Court issued its decision in Greenteam on June 21, 2017, so Petitioner would successfully jump through this hoop.

However, Petitioners may not simply ask for the Court to step in without providing Respondent an opportunity to correct its mistake. Rule 260(b) specifies the content of the motion, which requires “a copy of the petitioner’s written demand on the Commissioner to refund the overpayment determined by the Court . . . [which] shall have been made not less than 60 days before the filing of the motion under this Rule . . . .” The demand also must be made to the last counsel of record for the Commissioner—not on any other Service employee.

I’m not sure whether Petitioner’s counsel made this demand, but it seems as if it at least wasn’t attached to the letter sent to the Tax Court.

Judge Holmes orders that the letter be treated as a motion under Rule 260, but subsequently denies that motion as being premature (presumably because no demand has been shown as made on Respondent).

Regardless, Judge Holmes does pontificate over whether the Court has any refund jurisdiction in the first instance. After all, no overpayment determination was made in the partnership level case; in TEFRA cases all overpayment issues are necessarily made at the partner level. According to Judge Holmes, section 6512(a)(4) “states [that the Tax Court’s] ordinary overpayment jurisdiction does not apply.”

I quibble somewhat with that statement; 6512(a) provides that a Petitioner may not obtain a refund using other mechanisms (e.g., a refund claim or suit); subsection (a)(4) provides an exception to this rule for partner level refund determinations. Rather, section 6512(b) provides the Tax Court with jurisdiction to determine overpayments, which presumes that the Tax Court has determined whether a deficiency exists and can therefore determine whether an overpayment exists. It can’t do so directly in partnership cases, and so the argument goes, the Tax Court doesn’t have refund jurisdiction as to related partners in such cases.

Still, section 6230(d)(5) provides, that “in the case of any overpayment by a partner which is attributable to a partnership item (or an affected item) and which may be refunded through this subchapter, to the extent practicable credit or refund of such overpayment shall be allowed or made without any requirement that the partner file a claim therefor.” Judge Holmes notes that secondary sources are unclear on whether, read together, these sections grant the Court overpayment jurisdiction in such a case.

Judge Holmes seems willing to consider the issue, but Petitioner must first renew its request under Rule 260. First step: issue a demand letter to Respondent’s counsel under Rule 260. Or, as the Service suggested, take up the issue in District Court or the Court of Federal Claims (where the jurisdictional issue is much less murky).

Docket No. 6699-18S, Banini v. C.I.R. (Order Here)

This order from Judge Leyden highlights my concern with the Court’s use of Designated Orders to fully dispose of cases. The facts of the case are also interesting, and a reminder to law students that they most likely cannot deduct their ever-increasing tuition payments.

Petitioner was a “Patent Technical Advisor” at a large law firm, and took advantage of the firm’s offer of non-interest-bearing loans to attend law school. Mr. Banini deducted his law school tuition payments on his federal income tax return for 2013 and 2014, and eventually graduated with a J.D. in January 2015.

Education expenses are deductible as business expenses under section 162 if the education “maintains or improves skills required by the taxpayer in his employment … or meets the express requirements of the taxpayer’s employer, or of other applicable law or regulations, imposed as a condition to the retention of the taxpayer of an established employment relationship….” 26 C.F.R. § 1.162-5(a). However, such expenses are still nondeductible if the education qualifies the taxpayer for a new trade or business. Id. § 1.162-5(b). So, even if the education “maintains or improves skills required by the taxpayer in his employment” (as a legal education certainly may when working as a patent agent in a large law firm), the expenses are nondeductible if the education qualifies the taxpayer for a new trade or business.

In the years that Petitioner deducted his education expenses, he was a Patent Technical Advisory—not an attorney. Therefore, Judge Leyden finds that the educational expenses qualified him for a new trade or business, even though the expenses could conceivably maintain or improve his skills within the scope of his current employment relationship with the law firm. Substantively, all is well and good with this order. The legal issue is straightforward.

But why dispose of this case via order at all, and not include it in the Tax Court Summary Opinion reporter? Off the cuff, reasons to not include an order in a reporter could include (1) a non-substantive order (such as an order setting a date for trial or for payment of a filing fee), (2) a concern regarding the order’s precedential effect (i.e., orders are, under Tax Court Rule 50(f), nonprecedential), and (3) relatedly, an efficiency concern regarding the opinion’s issuance procedures through the Chief Judge, which judges have previously noted as a reason to issue orders (and to designate them).

This order fully disposes of a substantive legal issue in this case. There is no precedential concern, because this is a Small Case; under section 7463(b), such cases carry no precedential value. That leaves us with an efficiency concern, i.e., that it may take more time to issue the opinion via the Court’s formal procedures, and that an order may more quickly disposes of the substantive issue.

The Court and individual judges must balance this efficiency concern with the public’s interest in obtaining information on the substantive legal issues. The order in Banini will not appear in searches on Westlaw, Lexis, or any other service. It appeared as a “Designated Order”, but only readers of this blog and individuals who checked the Tax Court’s website on December 13, 2018 would know this. (Searches on Westlaw and Lexis that I conducted returned no results regarding this case). Individuals searching for section 162 issues involving educational expenses and patent agents will likewise not find this case, unless they know to search the Court’s docket. A search of Westlaw and Lexis likewise revealed nothing more than a few old cases involving this fact pattern.

I understand the efficiency rationale behind issuing this decision as an order. Perhaps there is some other advantage of which I’m unaware. Nevertheless, I believe this strikes the wrong balance and obscures otherwise helpful information from the public. Understanding this concern, the Tax Court might consider permitting judges to issue opinions independently in a nonprecedential small case. This would better address the efficiency concern, while allowing the public and practitioners greater access to these decisions. This may raise a separate consistency concern among the Court, but this is somewhat mitigated because the opinions are nonprecedential.

Odds & Ends:

Docket No. 6086-18L, Banahene v. C.I.R. (Order Here)

Judge Armen denied Respondent’s motion for summary judgment in this CDP case involving return preparer penalties. At issue is both 1) whether Respondent compiled with 26 C.F.R. § 1.6994-4(a)(1), (2) and 2) whether that regulation is mandatory or directory. That regulation seems to require that the Service “send a report of the examination to the tax return preparer” before assessing any penalties under section 6694. Section 2 of the regulation requires that the Service issue a 30-day letter to the preparer with administrative appeal rights, unless the statute of limitations on assessment under section 6696 will shortly run.

While Respondent desired summary judgment based upon the second issue—i.e., that the Service should, but need not comply with the regulations for the penalty assessments to be valid—Judge Armen did not wish to spend the Court’s limited resources to address this issue of first impression. Rather, if the Service actually had complied with the regulation, that novel issue would be mooted and the assessments upheld. Likewise, other issues raised in Respondent’s motion would be mooted if the assessments were invalid. Therefore, Judge Armen denied the motion.

Docket No. 21940-15L, McCarthy v. C.I.R. (Order Here)

Judge Halpern likewise denied Respondent’s motion for summary judgment in this CDP case, apparently because neither Petitioner nor Respondent addressed a dispositive issue in the case: whether Petitioner’s failure to provided updated financial information to IRS Appeals could serve as an independent basis to uphold the Service’s Notice of Determination. Instead, the parties focused on the correctness of Appeals’ decision to treat assets in Petitioner’s trust as those held by Petitioner’s nominee. Judge Halpern allows that, if failure to submit the financials would’ve been futile (i.e., Appeals had chosen to stick to its position to deny any requested collection alternative because of the trust issue), such failure might not support affirming Appeals’ decision. But because these issues are not in the record or otherwise briefed, Judge Halpern orders Petitioner to explain this failure in more detail.

Docket No. 23444-14, Palmolive Building Investors, LLC v. C.I.R. (Order Here)

Finally, Judge Gustafson denies summary judgment to Petitioner in this conservation easement case. Petitioner had requested summary judgment, asking the Court to find that Petitioner qualified for a reasonable cause exception to penalties, which were at issue due to the Court’s prior opinion upholding Respondent’s deficiency assessment.

Judge Gustafson denies summary judgment rather … summarily. However, he goes on to offers some comments, designed to help the parties prepare for trial—and of general interest to practitioners. He notes that some of the arguments raised as to reasonable cause depend upon legal issues decided as a matter of first impression and upon which the Tax Court and a Court of Appeals had disagreed. These factors generally auger in favor of a reasonable cause finding, because of the uncertainty regarding a party’s position on the issue. He notes, however, that a reasonable cause finding requires examination of all of the facts and circumstances, of which the legal issue’s novelty and the circuit split are but two. Because other facts and circumstances are materially disputed, summary judgment is not the appropriate vehicle to address these issues.

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