Getting a Refund in CDP: Don’t Call it a (Rebate) Refund

Imagine that the IRS levied on your state tax refund when it has not properly followed the procedures (that is, the law) prior to doing so. Fortunately, under IRC § 6330(f) you are provided a CDP hearing after the levy. You are pretty upset: indeed, you want the money back for the IRS’s improper levy.

Months ago, I wrote about this exact scenario with the IRS CP504 “Notice of Intent to Levy.” I argued if the IRS does not properly send the CP504 (for example, it isn’t sent to the “last known address”), the IRS should have to return the levied proceeds to the taxpayer. I suggested that this be done at the CDP hearing.

Carl Smith noted in the comments section that you probably wouldn’t be able to get these proceeds returned in CDP because the Tax Court does not (believe itself to) have “refund jurisdiction.” See Greene-Thapedi. And I completely agree with Carl that if you ask the Tax Court to “order” a “refund” in CDP it isn’t going to happen.

But I don’t think that ends the inquiry or addresses the actual hypothetical I laid out. And it is important to understand why.

It is fair to say that the Tax Court has tended to take a rather narrow view of its ability to order refunds in CDP litigation. The posts here and here detail multiple cases where the Tax Court (and affirming appellate courts) say “sorry, but if you’re asking for a refund you’re in the wrong place.”

One could therefore be excused for looking at these decisions and saying “if you’re asking for money back, it isn’t going to happen in CDP.” In a likely ill-advised effort of providing a mnemonic device, I’m going to refer to this approach as being a “Thapedi-Thumper,” since a broad reading of Greene-Thapedi really forms the backbone of this belief.

I see two fundamental problems with the Thaepdi-Thumper approach. The first problem is focusing too much on the need for the Tax Court’s jurisdictional power to order a refund. The second, related problem, is a failure to focus on the actual people and actual processes that resolve the bulk of CDP controversies.

I will cover the second problem in my next post. For now, let’s look at if and when you really need “refund jurisdiction” in CDP to get the remedy you’re asking for.

Overpayments and Refunds – Keep Them Separate

In my previous post I noted the distinction between an “overpayment” and a “refund.” Namely, that an “overpayment” is what happens when you have more credits/payments than tax, and a “refund” is when the IRS actually sends that excess money to you. It is important to keep those notions separate.

Let’s start with the Tax Court and overpayments in CDP. I think it’s clear that the Tax Court is actually less averse to making determinations about the existence or amount of overpayments than Thapedi-Thumpers may believe. Indeed, Greene-Thapedi itself suggests this in the oft-cited and tantalizing “Footnote 19,” which provides:

We do not mean to suggest that this Court is foreclosed from considering whether the taxpayer has paid more than was owed, where such a determination is necessary for a correct and complete determination of whether the proposed collection action should proceed. Conceivably, there could be a collection action review proceeding where (unlike the instant case) the proposed collection action is not moot and where pursuant to sec. 6330(c)(2)(B), the taxpayer is entitled to challenge “the existence or amount of the underlying tax liability”. In such a case, the validity of the proposed collection action might depend upon whether the taxpayer has any unpaid balance, which might implicate the question of whether the taxpayer has paid more than was owed.

To me, the footnote suggests that the Tax Court may consider overpayments when relevant to a proposed (i.e. not mooted) collection action. The Schwartz case is consistent with this: there was still outstanding tax on multiple years (i.e. no refund would result), but the “validity of the proposed collection action” on the years where there was an overpayment would obviously not be upheld. That’s why Judge Vasquez said it didn’t matter if he looked at the issue from abuse of discretion or de novo: the levy wouldn’t be sustained either way.

The problem is that so many taxpayers (understandably) want to take it a step further: they have an overpayment, so why not also order a refund? That’s what the taxpayer in McLane v. Commissioner (T.C. Memo. 2018-149) wanted, and that’s what the Tax Court resisted. As far as collection went, the “overpayment” tax year at issue (2008) was already fixed by the parties, with the IRS abating the assessment.

So let’s move to when, if ever, you might get a refund in CDP litigation. On that question I’d say that it is clear the Tax Court will not order a refund of an overpayment. But the Tax Court may order a refund of other ill-gotten funds.

What does that mean? It means that if you are saying you “paid more tax” than you have due (i.e. an overpayment) you are out of luck in CDP litigation. But if instead you are saying the IRS took money they shouldn’t have (say, by failing to follow proper procedures), you may just get your money back.

If you want to put a technical spin on it, I’d say that the Tax Court is averse to ordering “rebate refunds,” and perhaps less averse to “non-rebate refunds.” Again, I commend Professor Camp’s article to those who want to learn more about the distinction between the two. For present purposes (and possibly in contravention of what Professor Camp himself would agree to), I’m going to classify any disbursement of money to the taxpayer that doesn’t result from an overpayment as a “non-rebate refund.”

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one: Chocallo v. C.I.R., T.C. Memo. 2004-152.

The Chocallo opinion involves a disgruntled pro se petitioner asking the Tax Court to exercise all sorts of powers it does not have in CDP: namely, criminal prosecution of IRS employees and other monetary compensation. The Tax Court pretty easily determines it doesn’t have jurisdiction to do so. But you might ask why the petitioner was so upset in the first place…

And that’s where things get interesting.

The Tax Court found that the IRS had levied on Chocallo’s bank account (for approx. $23,000) prior to offering her a statutorily required CDP hearing. (The IRS later discovered that the underlying assessment was invalid too… oops.) Because the levy improperly occurred prior to being offered a CDP hearing the Tax Court, in Judge Ruwe’s words, “ordered that the amount collected by levy be returned to petitioner with interest.”

Wow. Ordering money being returned in a CDP hearing… How are we to unpack this?

The Chocallo opinion was issued before Greene-Thapedi, which is important. The Tax Court was aware of Chocallo when it gave its opinion… and in approximately three paragraphs discussing Chocallo, gave no indication that it disagreed with the return of the improperly levied proceeds. Indeed, the court thought it an important distinction that Chocallo dealt with an improper levy rather than offset, as was the case in Greene-Thapedi.

This is all to suggest that Chocallo is in fact consistent with Greene-Thapedi. The Court doesn’t find it necessary to explain why Chocallo is consistent, but I can think of a couple reasons it might have latched on to.

First, one could argue that what the Tax Court did in Chocallo was not to order a “refund” or even to determine an “overpayment.” Instead, it ordered the IRS to “return” certain levy proceeds. Note, importantly, that as I define it, these would be “non-rebate refunds.” The return of money in this case has nothing to do with whether there was an “overpayment” or not: it just has to do with the propriety of the collection action.

(As an aside, note that this is exactly the remedy I’d be asking for in the hypothetical involving an invalid CP504 Notice and levy on state tax refund I posted on, which Carl seemed to disagree with me about. Because I can’t let it go, more on why, regardless of Chocallo, I think I’d have a good chance of getting the levied proceeds back in CDP in my next post.)

Second, one could read Chocallo as merely addressing a procedural wrong (levy prior to CDP hearing), that in a very real sense has nothing to do with the “underlying liability” of the tax, and everything to do with the levy action itself. And what exactly is the Tax Court given jurisdiction over if not a review of the propriety of levy actions?

Indeed, PT has covered something quite similar before in Cosner v. Commissioner. Strangely enough, the Tax Court seems to care when the IRS improperly levies in CDP litigation reviewing the propriety of levy actions…

Reasons to Doubt My Optimism

Yet despite everything I’ve written, one could still be excused for wondering how much a “non-precedential” (reasons for scare quotes in this post) memorandum opinion from 2004 can really open the door to getting money back in CDP. Similarly, is the Tax Court really going to be swayed by arcane (and questionable) distinctions between “rebate” and “non-rebate” refunds?

I think the issue has yet to be determined. The case that actually worries me the most isn’t Greene-Thapedi or any of the other “please give me a refund of overpayment” cases. Rather, it is the much-maligned Brown v. Commissioner saga (as written about here, here and here among other places).

It appears that the litigious Mr. Brown asked the Tax Court to provide a refund of his TIPRA payment on his returned Offer in Compromise… and the Tax Court said it has no such jurisdiction. That would very plainly be a “non-rebate” refund. A big strike against the distinction I’ve attempted to draw, albeit in a non-precedential opinion. I’ve also previously complained about the Brown’s case failure to raise administrative law arguments, and I seriously doubt that it raised the rebate/non-rebate distinction here, so perhaps the argument could still persuade a judge. But the existence of this opinion makes the fight a little more uphill.

Nonetheless, I’d note that Brown had relatively bad facts for the taxpayer. I’d also note that Greene-Thapedi, McLane, and others tend to have extremely convoluted fact patterns. It is possible that when the issue is a bit more clear-cut (IRS didn’t follow proper procedures) the Tax Court may be willing to order appropriate relief, short of a “rebate refund.” The Tax Court does, I believe, want to fix obvious wrongs so long as it has the jurisdictional “power” to do so.

So long as there is an obvious inequity and the remedy doesn’t violate refund jurisdiction, the Tax Court can help. Note that Greene-Thapdedi references (without criticizing) Chocallo’s return of the improperly levied proceeds as an exercise of the “Tax Court’s inherent equitable powers.” The precedential case Zapara v. Commissioner (126 T.C. 215 (2006)) is also a very clear exercise of inherent equitable powers. And again in 2006 (albeit in the non-precedential Sampson-Gray v. Commissioner, T.C. Summ. Op. 2006-19), the Tax Court (1) references its inherent equitable powers, (2) cares about whether there was a procedural defect to be remedied, and (3) “expects” the IRS to do the right thing and credit the taxpayer with the money that is due to them (see footnote 5).

Put together, this means that you may not be out of luck in Tax Court during CDP litigation when you’re asking for money back, so long as you aren’t asking for an “order” of a (rebate) “refund.” But beyond that, as I’ll detail in my next post, even if what you want is undeniably a rebate refund, CDP may still help get you where you want to go.