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Juneteenth And Section 7503: A New Federal Holiday Give a New “Last Chance” For Some

Posted on June 18, 2021

Today guest blogger Bryan Camp discuses the implications for tax procedure of the new federal holiday celebrating Juneteenth. National recognition of Juneteenth resulted from a years-long campaign by many including the incredible 94-year old activist and survivor of white supremacist violence Opal Lee. Christine

Yesterday, President Biden signed legislation that made June 19th a federal holiday. It’s the first new federal holiday since President Reagan signed on to the creation of Martin Luther King Day back in 1983.

The new holiday means paid time off for some. Certainly all federal workers will get it, and other workers, too, to the extent one’s employer automatically pegs paid holidays to the federal calendar.

But the first thought for tax procedure nerds is, of course, IRC §7503. That statute provides that when any deadline for performing “any act” required under “this title” falls on Saturday, Sunday, or a “legal holiday,” why then “the performance of such act shall be considered timely if it is performed on the next succeeding day which is not a Saturday, Sunday, or a legal holiday.” The Tax Court piggybacks off of this rule, saying that §7503 also applies to deadlines for Tax Court petitions. TC Rule 22.

Section 7503 will apply to the new holiday just like it applies to others. This year, for example, June 19th falls on a Saturday. The enacting legislation says that when that happens, the holiday will be celebrated on the preceding Friday, June 18th. And THAT means that June 18th is now a legal holiday, so §7503 acts to defer any act due today until Monday, June 21st. I have not read the legislation, but I am guessing that when June 19th falls on a Sunday, the holiday will be celebrated on the next day, Monday. After all, we cannot let holidays go to waste.

Let’s call that the 3-day weekend rule!

This is also a good moment to review a couple of other quirks about §7503 associated with the statute’s definition of “legal holiday.” Surprisingly, the term is not defined to mean a federal holiday, at least not directly. Let me explain.

The term encompasses two types of holidays. First, the term means any federal holiday. Technically, the statute actually says that the term just refers to “a legal holiday in the District of Columbia.” However, since DC is currently under federal jurisdiction that statutory definition means that any federal holiday is a “legal holiday.”

One quirk involving this definition is that DC celebrates a holiday called “Emancipation Day.” That day is supposed to fall on April 16th but the enacting legislation also contains a 3-day weekend rule. The result is that when April 15th falls on a Saturday, that means that Monday April 17th is a legal holiday in DC, which means that §7503 kicks in and pushes the April 15th filing date to April 18th. That is what happened in 2017 for tax year 2016 returns.

The second type of holiday that triggers operation of §7503 is trickier to figure out. It provides that when any act is required “to be performed, at any office of the Secretary or at any other office of the United States or any agency thereof, located outside the District of Columbia but within an internal revenue district” then the term “legal holiday” also means “a Statewide legal holiday in the State where such office is located.”

One example of a statewide legal holiday that sometimes affects the April 15th filing deadline is the Patriots Day holiday. No, it’s not about the sports team. It is designated to be celebrated on the third Monday in April (so no need for a 3-day weekend rule). Several states have that day as a statewide holiday.

So what happens when the third Monday in April is the 15th, 16th, or 17th (do you see why it matters that it falls on the 16th or 17th?). So far, the IRS has taken the position that only those taxpayers who live in the states that celebrate the holiday can use §7503, to push their filing deadline to Tuesday, even if they are required to file in an IRS Campus that is not in a state celebrating that holiday. See IRS Notice 2006-23. That does not make much sense to me. The statutory language would appear to key the effect of a statewide holiday to whether the IRS office where a document must be filed is in the state, not where the taxpayer required to file happens to live. Thus, because there is a a returns processing center in Andover Massachusetts, a state that observes Patriots Day, then §7503 should apply to all taxpayers required to file in Andover.

Section 7503 is woefully outdated. The reason for the two separate definitions was that in the old days, taxpayers filed their returns in local offices but much of the processing and assessment work was done in Washington D.C. And when I say “the old days” folks, I mean the really old days, before the introduction of the Computing Centers and centralized returns processing in the early 1960’s! That’s how outdated the language is.

Further, alert readers will also notice that the statute refers to “internal revenue districts.” They no longer exist. They were abolished by the 1998 IRS Restructuring and Reform Act. But did Congress think to change the language in §7503? Noooooo. So we just stumble along, applying outdated statutory language to new situations as best we can. Thankfully, the creation of a new federal holiday fits very nicely within the definition of “legal holiday” contained in §7503. ….until D.C. achieves statehood.

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