Tax Court Building Reopens

As we discussed previously, the Tax Court announced proposed rule changes in March.  The Tax Clinic at Harvard commented on those rules as did other parties including the ABA Tax Section, the Center for Taxpayer Rights and the IRS.  The Tax Court posts comments made to it on its web site; however, as of the time of writing this blog post, it had not posted the comments on the rule changes proposed in March of 2022.  So, I cannot link to the IRS comments because I do not have them, and I do not know if there were comments made by others.  The four groups that regularly comment on rules in recent years are the ABA Tax Section, the IRS, the Texas State Bar and the Harvard Tax Clinic; however, individuals also occasionally comment as well.  The comment process provides an excellent opportunity to provide the Court with your views.  I am somewhat surprised that the Court does not receive more comments.

Of course, the Court does not need to accept the views expressed, and it need not explain why it does or does not accept the views expressed in comments.  The Administrative Procedure Act does not govern the Court’s rulemaking process.  While a judge may occasionally make a statement at an ABA Tax Section meeting or some other setting about the Court’s consideration of rules, the process of considering comments remains, by and large, veiled in secrecy.  Even though I do not have a great track record on having my views adopted, I feel that the Court considers them and appreciate the opportunity to formally express them. 

Speaking of expressing my views, I will tie the Tax Clinic at Harvard’s most recent comment on access to records into the reopening of the Court.  While the reopening of the Court offers an alternative to some to reach the public records at the Court, for most persons seeking those records a trip to the Records Office may prove too expensive in time or money.  In the most recent comments, the Harvard Clinic suggested an improvement on the current remote access to records provision which requires a phone call to the Records Office.  I have written before about the process.

Sometimes a person at the Records Office answers the phone when you call seeking records.  If no one answers, you leave a message and someone calls you back in a few hours or a few days.  If someone answers, they take your request and tell you they will get back to you in several business days.  The process regularly involves phone tag at the beginning or the end or both.  The suggestion of the Harvard Clinic was to eliminate the phone tag part of the process by creating a fax number into which your records order could be faxed (together with a form for the request) or a dedicated email account into which you could email your request.  Allowing the requester to fax or email the request would eliminate the phone tag that occurs now when requesting records and allow members of the office staff to avoid the sometimes lengthy conversations regarding requests for documents from multiple cases.

Now that the Court and the Records Office have reopened, a lucky few can more easily access the public records available at the Tax Court but closely guarded.  A good small step to reopening after the pandemic closure.