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Taxpayer Who Detrimentally Relied on IRS Erroneous Filing Information Properly Tossed from Tax Court

Posted on May 15, 2017

Frequent guest poster Carl Smith updates us on the Third Circuit’s decision last week in Rubel v Commissioner, which considers whether IRS mistakes when it communicates deadlines to people seeking relief from joint and several liability could be subject to equitable tolling. As we have discussed in prior posts, Carl and Keith have been actively litigating this issue; Rubel is the first circuit court opinion on the issue. Les

As you may recall from my post of last September, Keith and I have appeared pro bono in several Tax Court cases presenting the issue of whether, under current non-tax Supreme Court case law on jurisdiction, the time period to file an innocent spouse petition in the Tax Court under § 6015(e) is jurisdictional or subject to equitable tolling. This is an issue of first impression in the Circuit courts, though the Tax Court has held the period jurisdictional and not subject to equitable tolling since Pollock v. Commissioner, 132 T.C. 131 (2009). Two of our cases were in the courts of appeals, Rubel v. Commissioner, Third Circuit Docket No. 16-3526, and Matuszak v. Commissioner, Second Circuit Docket No. 16-3034, where the oral arguments were held on March 16 and April 20, respectively.

In both cases, during the 90-day period to file, an IRS employee told the taxpayers a date for the end of the 90-day period that was erroneous, and the taxpayers relied on that date in filing their petitions. In both cases, the Tax Court dismissed the cases for lack of jurisdiction as having been filed late — considering the timely filing requirement to be a jurisdictional one. Jurisdictional time periods can never be equitably tolled or subject to estoppel. A common ground for equitable tolling outside the tax area is when the defendant actively misleads the plaintiff as to a filing deadline.

In Rubel v. Commissioner, the Third Circuit has just affirmed the Tax Court.

Background

For decades, both the Tax Court and the Circuit courts have held that the Tax Court, being a court of limited jurisdiction, has only such jurisdiction as is provided by Congress and that absent compliance with the time period to file a deficiency petition, the Tax Court lacks jurisdiction (i.e., the power to act). But, more recently, in Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443, 454-455 (2004), the Supreme Court held that both it and lower courts had overused the word “jurisdictional”; henceforth, the Supreme Court insisted that “jurisdiction” only be used to denote subject matter and personal jurisdiction, not claims-processing rules that Congress imposes to move litigation along. The Supreme Court has since called filing deadlines “quintessential claims-processing rules”. Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U.S. 428, 435 (2011).

The Supreme Court has recognized two exceptions to its current jurisdictional rules: First, Congress may overrule the Supreme Court’s preference by making a “clear statement” that a claims-processing rule is intended to be jurisdictional. Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U.S. 500, 515-516 (2006). Second, if a long line of Supreme Court precedents over 100 years has called a time period jurisdictional, it will remain so under stare decisis. Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 207 (2007); John R. Sand & Gravel Co, v. United States, 552 U.S. 130 (2008). Still, the Supreme Court has noted the “rarity of jurisdictional time limits” under the clear statement exception; United States v. Wong, 135 S. Ct. 1625, 1632 (2015); and stated that “Congress must do something special, beyond setting an exception-free deadline, to tag a statute of limitations as jurisdictional and so prohibit a court from tolling it.” Id.

In fact, in about a dozen cases, beginning with Kontrick, the Supreme Court has never found that any claims-processing rule is jurisdictional under the “clear statement” exception. So, for now, that exception is only a theoretical one, with no concrete examples from the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has never expressed any view on whether either a Tax Court or Board of Tax Appeals filing deadline is jurisdictional.

Rubel Holding

In both Rubel and Matuszak, the IRS has argued that both exceptions to the Kontrick rule apply to make the 90-day period in § 6015(e) jurisdictional and not subject to equitable tolling.

At least one bright spot (to me) of the holding in Rubel is no mention in the opinion of the stare decisis exception’s application. The IRS had argued that the Second and Third Circuits should give stare decisis deference to all the rulings from the Tax Court and Circuit courts that have held the deficiency filing period jurisdictional and more recent Tax Court opinions holding the § 6015(e) and § 6330(d)(1) (for Collection Due Process (CDP)) time periods jurisdictional. I assume the Third Circuit in Rubel steered away from discussing this because there is no Supreme Court opinion that articulates this stare decisis exception as applying to rulings of courts below the Supreme Court. See Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U.S. 154, 173-174 (2010) (Ginsburg, J, concurring, joined by Stevens and Breyer, JJ.) (“[I]n Bowles and John R. Sand & Gravel Co. . . . we relied on longstanding decisions of this Court typing the relevant prescriptions ‘jurisdictional.’ Amicus cites well over 200 opinions that characterize § 411(a) as jurisdictional, but not one is from this Court. . . .”; emphasis in original; citations omitted). However, in doing so, the Rubel opinion differs from the recent opinions in Guralnik v. Commissioner, 146 T.C. No. 15 (2016) (holding § 6330(d)(1) time period jurisdictional in part by applying stare decisis exception to rulings of lower courts in CDP and deficiency opinions), and Tilden v. Commissioner, 846 F.3d 882, 886 (7th Cir. 2017) (holding § 6213(a) time period jurisdictional in part by applying stare decisis exception to rulings of lower courts in deficiency opinions).

Section 6015(e)(1) provides that:

In the case of an individual . . . who requests equitable relief [,(the kind requested by Ms. Rubel)] . . . the individual may petition the Tax Court (and the Tax Court shall have jurisdiction) to determine the appropriate relief available to the individual under this section if such petition is filed . . . not later than the close of the 90th day after the date [on which the IRS mails notice of its final determination of relief available to the individual].

The Third Circuit found two reasons for interpreting the time provision in this sentence as jurisdictional:

First, the context of the provision—how § 6015(e)(1)(A) fits within the statute as a whole—shows that it is jurisdictional. The statute’s grant of jurisdiction to the Tax Court and the time limit for activating that jurisdiction are located within the same provision. Moreover, the provision is located within the same subsection of § 6015 that sets forth other conditions that trigger or limit the Tax Court’s jurisdiction. § 6015(e)(3) (setting forth the limitations on the Tax Court’s jurisdiction). In addition, the filing period and the filing of the petition itself impacts the IRS’s ability to begin its collection efforts. More specifically, § 6015(e)(1)(B)(i) provides that no levy or collection proceeding can commence during the ninety-day window to petition for relief or, if a petition is filed in the Tax Court, until the Tax Court’s decision becomes final. This further reflects that the ninety-day period is meant to allocate when different components of the tax system have the authority to act and further supports the view that § 6015(e) is jurisdictional. Thus, the structure of § 6015 reflects Congress’s intent to set the boundaries of the Tax Court’s authority.

. . . .

Second, the Supreme Court has historically found that filing deadlines in tax statutes are jurisdictional because allowing case-specific exceptions and individualized equities could lead to unending claims and challenges and upset the IRS’s need for “finality and certainty.” Becton Dickinson & Co. v. Wolckenhauer, 215 F.3d 340, 351 (3d Cir. 2000); accord United States v. Brockamp, 519 U.S. 347, 349-54 (1997) (“Tax law . . . is not normally characterized by case-specific exceptions reflecting individualized equities.”). Rigid deadlines, such as those embodied in the tax law’s jurisdictional requirements, promote predictability of the revenue stream, which is vital to the government. See Becton Dickinson, 215 F.3d at 348 (stating that “the nature of the underlying subject matter—tax collection” underscores the need for an emphatic deadline (quoting Brockamp, 519 U.S. at 352)).

Slip op. at pp 8-11 (some citations omitted).

In a footnote, the Third Circuit provided rather cold comfort to Ms. Rubel: “While the Tax Court and this Court cannot alter a jurisdictional deadline, and the taxpayer is responsible for calculating when the deadline expires, we remind the IRS to exercise care when drafting correspondence to a taxpayer to assure it is accurate. “ Slip op. at p. 11 n.8.

Observations

Keith and I think the Rubel opinion is wrong for many reasons. We particularly think the court does not do an adequate job of distinguishing the Supreme Court opinion on which we principally relied, Sebelius v. Auburn Regional Medical Center, 133 S. Ct. 817 (2013). In Auburn, a single sentence in a subsection of the U.S. Code authorized a Medicare provider who was unhappy with the amount of reimbursement received to bring an action before a board “if” three conditions were met, one of which was meeting a 180-day filing deadline. There was no other provision in the U.S. Code that authorized the board to hold such hearings, so the sentence, in effect, created an implicit jurisdictional grant. The Supreme Court did not contradict the amicus, who argued that the first two conditions of the sentence were jurisdictional in nature. But, the Supreme Court took issue with the amicus’ argument that this made the filing period in the sentence also jurisdictional, noting that it wrote in Gonzalez v. Thaler, 565 U.S. 134, 147 (2012), that “[m]ere proximity will not turn a rule that speaks in nonjurisdictional terms into a jurisdictional hurdle.” The Rubel court distinguished Auburn by saying that, by contrast, § 6015(e) includes an explicit, not implicit, jurisdictional grant. Slip op. at p. 9-10 n.7. But, Keith and I don’t see why that should make a big difference, since in both statutes, the power of the court or board is authorized by the same sentence that contains the jurisdictional grant (implicit or explicit) and is followed by the condition “if” a time period is met. We don’t think the Supreme Court would want to make only this slight difference of the additional use of the word “jurisdiction” somewhere before the time period enough to satisfy the clear statement exception.

Moreover, the Supreme Court has also emphasized that in interpreting a statute’s time period as jurisdictional, the context of the entire action should be considered. In Henderson v. Shinseki, supra, the Court found the time period for veterans to file an appeal of a denial of benefits in the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims nonjurisdictional, in part, because of the long period Congress gave for veterans to raise their claims and the solicitous nature of Congress toward veterans. Taxpayers who request innocent spouse relief can do so at any time during the 10-year period in which collection may be made under § 6502. And Congress has made equity a major reason for the granting of innocent spouse relief. Surely, it seems odd that equitable tolling would not be allowed in an area of the Tax Code providing unusual equitable relief.

The Rubel opinion’s citation to Becton Dickinson and Brockamp for the proposition that all Tax Code time periods are jurisdictional is also problematic. Brockamp never said that. Indeed, the words “jurisdiction” and “jurisdictional” do not even appear in the Brockamp opinion. That opinion merely held that the period to file a refund claim in § 6511(a) is not subject to equitable tolling under the presumption in favor of equitable tolling of nonjurisdictional statutes of limitations laid out in Irwin v. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, 498 U.S. 89 (1990), because of the many complicated rules already set out in the statute and the administrative problems that would ensue as to the then nearly 100 million refund returns filed annually, which would all have to be considered eligible for equitable tolling when filed late. There is no similar administrative problem with Tax Court innocent spouse suits because there appear to be only about 500 filed annually. And I checked that in the last 12 months, only 15 such suits have been dismissed for lack of jurisdictional as untimely (either late or premature), and only four such suits (including Rubel and Matuszak) presented any fact pattern approaching one where the Tax Court might have to consider equitable tolling.

The Rubel court also did not consider the context of the enactment of § 6015. It seems wrong to assume that Congress would want the time period not to be subject to equitable tolling, since the equitable provision, § 6015, was enacted by Pub. L. 105-206, § 3201, paired with § 3202, under the heading “Relief for Innocent Spouses and for Taxpayers Unable to Manage Their Financial Affairs Due to Disabilities” in H.R. Conf. Rept. 105-599 at 249. Section 3202 amended I.R.C. § 6511 to add a new subjection (h) to legislatively overrule the result in Brockamp as to financially disabled taxpayers. It is implausible that Congress would want the refund claim statute of limitations to be subject to equitable tolling yet want the time period in the related new equitable innocent spouse statute not to be subject to equitable tolling.

Finally, Becton Dickinson in 2000 held that the 9-month time period in § 6532(c) in which to bring a wrongful levy suit in district court is jurisdictional and not subject to equitable tolling. But, recently, the Ninth Circuit completely disagreed with that holding in Volpicelli v. United States, 777 F.3d 1042 (9th Cir. 2015), holding that, under more recent Supreme Court case law, the time period is not jurisdictional and is subject to equitable tolling under the Irwin presumption. The Third Circuit should have read Volpicelli (which we cited) and realized that Becton Dickinson can’t stand up under current Supreme Court case law. Indeed, Volpicelli wrote:

The [Supreme] Court may in time decide that Congress did not intend equitable tolling to be available with respect to any tax-related statute of limitations. But that’s not what the Court held in Brockamp. It instead engaged in a statute-specific analysis of the factors that indicated Congress did not want equitable tolling to be available under § 6511. The Court later made clear in Holland [v. Florida] that the “‘underlying subject matter’” of § 6511—tax law—was only one of those factors. 560 U.S. at 646, 130 S. Ct. 2549 (quoting Brockamp, 519 U.S. at 352).   As we have explained, the other factors on which the Court relied are not a close enough fit with § 6532(c) to render Brockamp controlling here.

777 F.3d at 1046.

Absent generating a Circuit split, though, Keith and I are unlikely to seek Supreme Court review of Rubel.

If we lose everywhere, we will probably urge a legislative fix.

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