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Summary Opinions aka Procedure Roundup for 11/08/13

Posted on Nov. 11, 2013

Busy day today.  In addition to writing up Summary Opinions, we will be raking leaves, starting holiday shopping, and working on some school projects in my household.  My daughters are also making paper turkey caricatures for each family member to decorate our house.  They have decided that mine will be a Tax Atturkey.  Not sure if the bad puns are a nature or nurture thing, but I’m sure it’s my fault.  On to the tax procedure:

  • TaxProfBlog has a summary of Patrick Smith’s recent article in the Virginia Tax Review, “Chevron’s Conflict with the Administrative Procedures Act.”  Mr. Smith writes in this area frequently.  This article specifically discusses the Chevron mandate on the court to defer to an agency’s interpretation, and the APA rule that the court shall interpret statutory provisions.  Although there is an apparent conflict, Mr. Smith notes that Chevron is likely here to stay.  The article advocates raising this issue with SCOTUS to draw attention to the matter, and perhaps obtain further Chevron guidance.
  • ITS Financial, LLC, and its owner Fesum Ogbazion, are on double not-so-secret probation.  Federal District Court slapped a permanent injunction prohibiting them from operating or being involved with any business relating to tax return preparation.  Journal of Accountancy has coverage here, including a huge list of transgressions.  This franchise was the real deal, in that it was filing over 100,000 returns a year, and over 150 franchisees.  Two related entities, Tax Tree and TCA Financial were also shuttered.  If the reports are true, I hope Mr. Ogbazion finds himself bunking with Freddie Mitchell.  Defrauding and stealing refunds from low income taxpayers isn’t terribly endearing.
  • Over at TaxControversyWatch (another Southeastern PA tax blogger) there is a summary of Johnson v. United States out of the Fourth Circuit.  The Court held that a wife was responsible for the responsible officer penalty under Section 6672 for her husband’s failure to pay employment taxes.  Tax bill was over $300k.  He may volunteer for being roomies with Freddie.  In all seriousness, it is an interesting case, where Mrs. Johnson was an officer, but appears to have had limited knowledge of her husband’s failure to pay the taxes.
  • Let’s head back towards unscrupulous tax advisors and the NFL. Gary J. Stern, a tax attorney, was permanently barred from promoting tax fraud schemes and preparing related returns.  Tax Update Blog has the story.  I took that language from the blog, and perhaps it is incorrect, because a court order permanently barring someone from promoting tax fraud seems silly. Apparently, one of the people who followed Mr. Stern’s terrible advice was NFL quarterback, Kyle Orton.  Kyle is holding a clipboard in Dallas now, along with stewing in anger and suing Mr. Stern for his bad tax advice.
  • Dan (the man) Alban of Loving oral argument fame tweeted this Institute for Justice article regarding the Eastern District of Michigan directing the Service to produce witnesses to testify about the handling of the seizure of the checking account of the owners of Schott’s Supermarket.  Apparently, on Sept. 25, the Service seized the account without warning, and little explanation has followed.  Hard to defend the Service if these facts are true.
  • From the Gawthrop Greenwood business blog, which I sometimes add content to, is an article regarding the IRS extending fast track settlement to smaller businesses.  There was also a second tax article posted regarding the expiration of the exclusion from gain on qualified small business stock, which can be found here.  Multiple tax posts…I’m going to have to start making them attend the tax department meetings.
  • At the Blog.TaxBizLawyer.com, there was a post regarding whether or not IRS liens remain valid when someone changes his or her name.  I recently handled a name change as a favor for a friend, and almost changed his name to the wrong new name.  Long story, but the judge almost signed an order with a very different name that was the wrong gender.  To the post, which outlines the Service’s affirmative duty to amend its lien filing when it is notified regarding a name change in order for the IRS lien to apply and have priority to property purchased after the name change.  I’ve never researched this issue, and was slightly surprised.
  • To the Journal of Accountancy, with an article on the characterization of remittances as deposit or payment.  I am doing some extensive work with Les on Chapter 6 of Saltzman and Book, which covers this topic, so I was excited to see this analysis.  This article deals specifically with the Syring Estate case decided in August.  In Syring, the estate made a remittance that was characterized under Rev. Proc. 2005-18 as a payment.  The taxpayer requested a refund, attempting to characterize it as a deposit, but had not specified it was a deposit at the time of the remittance.  The request was outside the statute for refund on a payment, and the Court held for the Service.
  • The Tax Court recently decided John D. Moore v. Commissioner, which involved the reasonable cause exception to the delinquency penalties based on reliance on a tax advisor.  This case is not that notable, but it is a taxpayer win on reasonable cause.  Taxpayer was able to show that he engaged competent professionals who were fully apprised of the facts regarding the sale and basis in his S-corp.  The basis was overstated, resulting in an underpayment of tax, but the taxpayer was protected from the penalties by relying on tax advisors to explain and report the transaction. For more on this exception to the delinquency penalty, see part one of my two part series on this exception as applied to some recent estate tax cases.
  • The Eastern District of California last week decided motions for summary judgment in New Gaming Systems, Inc. v. United States in a refund action for penalties collected by the Service in 1999.  New Gaming is a video game company that makes electronic gambling machines for Indian Reservation casinos.  My gambling is limited to obscure Olympic sports and beauty pageants, so I was not familiar with the company name.  Issue stems from an estimated tax payment made in 1999 that was filed with the extension, but was substantially less than what was actually due.  The Court said game over to the government’s summary judgment request on the issue of whether the estimate was reasonable, which would have provided abatement from the penalty.  The Court found this matter involved a finding of fact, and was not undisputed as the Service stated.  The Court also gave New Gaming an extra life to argue reliance on its accountant as another reason the penalty should be abated, even though it had not previously been raised.  The Government argued variance, but the Court found that New Gaming’s refund request indicating the payment was reasonable put the Service on notice that reasonable cause based on preparer reliance might be raised.  The opinion on the variance issue is interesting, and seemed to work hard to allow the taxpayer to move forward.
  • Magistrate judge for the Western District of Michigan, Southern Division, recommended in Charles v. United States, that a preparer’s petition to quash a third party summons be denied.  This was accepted by the Court last week here.  Magistrate recommendation can be found here on Checkpoint, if you have a subscription.  The main argument was that the Service had previously issued “no notice” summonses that were impermissible.  The Service had argued that the summonses were issued under Section 7609(c)(2)(C), which allows a summons to be issued without notice if it is solely to determine the identity of any person having a numbered account with a bank.  This was found to be inapplicable, and the taxpayer argued the information gathered from those summonses was used to generate other summonses which should be quashed.  Sort of fruit from the tainted summons tree.  The Court held that the only remedy was found under the Right to Financial Privacy Act, and it did not provide for disallowing the second set of summonses.  I don’t know enough about this area of the law to have an opinion as to whether this was right or wrong, but it doesn’t seem favorable to taxpayers.
  • And of course, last but not least, on Procedurally Taxing (where we racked up our 100th email subscriber and 10,000th page visit), in addition to the post I wrote on Knappe and reasonable cause I mentioned above, Keith wrote a thought provoking (and slightly tongue in cheek) take on the Service’s new IDR process, and Les suggested that TIGTA and IRS’s focus on EITC error rates stems from deep feelings that are suggestive that errors from refunds are qualitatively different from underpayments
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