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Sanctions, Converted Items Confusion and More, Designated Orders: October 14, 2019 – October 25, 2019

Posted on Dec. 13, 2019

Only one order was designated during Patrick Thomas’s week, the week of October 14, 2019, and two during mine, the week of October 21, 2019. As a result, this is a joint post from Patrick and me covering both weeks. It begins with Patrick’s coverage of the one order designated during his week.

Docket No. 12646-19, Brown v. C.I.R. (Order Here)

This short order displays the power of the Tax Court to sanction taxpayers who raise frivolous arguments or institute proceedings in the Court merely for purposes of delay. The Tax Court has a busy docket, handling approximately 25,000 new cases each year. Frivolous claims and proceedings instituted merely for purposes of delay clog that docket, at the expense of taxpayers who have legitimate disputes with the Service.

This case deals with Petitioner’s 2008 federal income taxes—with a petition filed on July 9, 2019. Given that timing, Respondent unsurprisingly filed a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, presumably arguing that Petitioner failed to file the petition within 90 days of the notice of deficiency.

The Petitioner in Brown had previously filed three cases in the Tax Court. In Docket 7375-18, he failed to pay the Court’s filing fee, and the case was accordingly dismissed. In Docket 4754-19, he raised a constitutional challenge to paying the filing fee, which the Court swiftly disposed of; constitutional challenges to the payment of filing fees are rarely successful. And after all, if Petitioner had a financial inability to pay the fee, the Tax Court provides a remedy through the fee waiver application.

Finally, in a case entitled “Estate of Ernest Richard Brown v. Commissioner”, at Docket 12335-11, the Court likewise dismissed the case due to failure to pay the fee and to properly prosecute the case.

Judge Carluzzo, in the present order in Docket 12646-19, notes that “a copy of the notice of deficiency [for 2008] is attached to the petition filed May 24, 2011,” but that in the present case, Petitioner denied ever receiving the notice. Accordingly, he regards that allegation as “patently false”.

Accordingly, Judge Carluzzo not only grants Respondent’s motion to dismiss, but also imposes a $500 penalty for the “frivolous pleading” in this case. I’m not sure if this low amount will dissuade Petitioner from continuing to challenge the liability. But as we’ve seen before, further frivolous proceedings will only lead to escalating penalties. And while the 6673 penalty is limited to $25,000, the penalty is imposed on any “proceedings” instituted before the Court—suggesting that the penalty could exceed $25,000 if Petitioner continues to file frivolous pleadings.

Docket Nos. 1143-05, 1144-05,1145-05, 1334-06,1335-06, 1504-06, 20673-09, 20674-09, 20675-09, 20676-09, 20677-09, 20678-09, 20679-09, 20680-09, 20681-09, David B. Greenburg, et. al. v. C.I.R. (Order Here)

This order involves a long-running consolidated, in-part TEFRA-related and in-part-deficiency-related case. It previously had orders designated during my week in September, which I didn’t specifically address, but now feel is unavoidable.

I must admit its significance is a bit lost on me – likely because it lives (somewhat) in the world of partnerships and TEFRA.

The case was already heard, decided (the opinion is here) and is in the computation stage, but the petitioners moved the Court to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction in August and the Court addressed- and denied – the motion. This most recent order was filed in October and asks the Court to reconsider that denial.

The October motion reiterates the arguments in the August motion, which seem to also be arguments that were addressed in the opinion (but with more focus on an issue with the partnership’s TEFRA election).

So what is it that petitioners keep arguing about? The IRS had sent notice to the petitioners about converting certain specified items into non-partnership items as result of a criminal investigation. This is permitted by section 6231(c)(1)(B). Once the items are converted, they are subject to deficiency proceedings rather than TEFRA proceedings because they are no longer considered to be partnership items.

Petitioners argue the Court does not have jurisdiction because the IRS asserted that certain items were converted items, when they were actually non-partnership items. This confuses the Court, because converted items are considered non-partnership items.

In other words, the crux of the petitioners argument is that a distinction should be made between “partnership items originally, but converted under TEFRA into nonpartnership items” and “items that aren’t converted into nonpartnership items by a converted items notice of deficiency because they are already nonpartnership items” and the Court doesn’t have proper jurisdiction over the latter.

The Court said it cannot make this jurisdictional distinction without some legal authority for doing so. It finds that it has jurisdiction over all of the items, even though the way in which the items became subject to the Court’s jurisdiction differed.

The Court acknowledges that the parties have preserved this issue for appeal (which is likely petitioners’ goal) and denies petitioners’ motion to dismiss yet again.

Docket No. 17286-18, Michael Sestak v. CIR (Order Here)

In this order, Judge Buch holds the IRS to a high standard (ironically, its own) when applying the last known address rule.

Petitioner notified the IRS of his change of address when he began serving a five-year sentence in a federal prison – the only part that he did not communicate was his prison registration number, which is the number used to identify individual inmates. The IRS received this correspondence because petitioner also requested an abatement of failure to file penalties due to the reasonable cause of his imprisonment, which the IRS granted.

In addition to petitioner’s correspondence, a relative of petitioner sent a letter to the IRS that discussed petitioner’s prison sentence and included petitioner’s new address, this time with his prisoner registration number. The IRS retained this letter in its records.

Then the IRS sent petitioner a notice of deficiency to the address petitioner provided without the prisoner registration number. The petitioner never received the notice of deficiency and only became aware of it after he started receiving collection notices. A year and a half after the notice of deficiency was sent, petitioner petitioned the Tax Court.

IRS moves to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction because the petition was not timely filed, arguing that it reasonably relied on petitioner’s letter (which, again, did not list the prisoner registration number) when it sent the notice to petitioner’s last known address.

If the IRS does not exercise reasonable diligence and sends a notice of deficiency to an incorrect address, the notice of deficiency is deemed invalid. The Court addressed this issue more generally in Keeton v. Commissioner, holding that the IRS did not use the last known address when it knew the taxpayer was incarcerated and didn’t send the notice to the prison.

This order takes that decision one step further. The IRS was aware of the incarceration and sent the letter to the prison, but the Court still finds that that wasn’t enough.

Referencing the IRM (while acknowledging its non-precedential value), the Court states,

The Commissioner’s own manual gives instructions for mailing notices of deficiency to incarcerated taxpayers. The Internal Revenue Manual (IRM) states that the address on the notice of deficiency “should reference the prisoner locator number, if available.” The IRM provides a link to the Bureau of Prisons website where Service personnel may find prison locator numbers and addresses. The IRM thus states that a complete address for a prisoner contains the prisoner registration number and then provides a link to find that number. Therefore, the Commissioner knew he had an incomplete address for [petitioner] because the IRM stated that a prisoner address should contain the prisoner’s registration number.

The IRS asserts that it acted reasonably because the notice was sent by the Automated Underreporter System to the address on file. The Court finds that requirements under the last known address rule of section 6212(b) do not depend on which system the IRS uses to mail the notice and due diligence is required when the IRS is aware an address is incorrect or incomplete. The Court dismisses the case for lack of jurisdiction but not on the IRS’s proposed basis, but rather on the basis that the notice of deficiency was invalid since it was not sent to the taxpayer’s last known address.

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