Tax Court Jurisdiction and the EITC Ban

The IRS issued a notice of deficiency to the Taylors regarding the 2013 tax year, listing a deficiency of $14, 186 and an IRC section 6662(a) accuracy-related penalty of $2,837.20. The deficiency results from disallowance of car and truck expenses the Taylors claimed on the Schedule C filed with their Form 1040.

The Taylors timely filed their Tax Court petition and the IRS filed their answer. The IRS followed up with an amended answer, raising two affirmative defenses. First, they raise an IRC section 6663 civil fraud penalty of $10,639.50, asserting the petitioners falsely claimed business-related car and truck expenses to reduce their income to make them eligible to claim the EITC. Second, the IRS raises the 10-year EITC ban pursuant to IRC section 32(k)(1)(B)(I) for improperly claiming the EITC.

To complete the procedural history, the Taylors did not participate further in their Tax Court case, which was to their detriment. They did not respond to the amended answer and the IRS followed with a “Motion for Entry of Order that Undenied Allegations be Deemed Admitted Pursuant to Rule 37(c).” The Court issued an order granting that motion, meaning the Taylors are deemed to have admitted all the statements in the amended answer, including the affirmative allegations with respect to the civil fraud penalty and the 10-year ban on claiming the EITC.

Next, the IRS filed a “Motion to Take Judicial Notice,” which requested the Court take judicial notice of the distances between the Taylors’ home and the various addresses Katrina Taylor reported driving during 2013 for her business activities. The motion asserts that the Taylors’ travel logs are unreliable and overstate the travel distances. The IRS provided Google Maps documents that show the distance and driving times for the routes Mrs. Taylor reported for the business destinations. Since the Taylors did not respond, the Court’s order granted the IRS motion, taking judicial notice of that information as facts, the accuracy of which cannot reasonably be questioned.

The IRS prepared a joint stipulation of facts that the Taylors refused to sign. The IRS filed a “Motion for Order to Show Cause Why Proposed Facts and Evidence Should not be Accepted as Established Pursuant to Rule 91(f).” The Court ordered the Taylors to respond to the motion. Since they failed to respond, the Court issued its order making the Order to Show Cause absolute, meaning the facts and evidence set forth in the proposed stipulation of facts was deemed to be established for the purposes of the case.

Turning to the facts established through the orders, the Taylors reported $105,914 in wages on their 2013 Form 1040, with $55,033 earned by Mrs. Taylor as an employee. The attached Schedule C listed financial data on Mrs. Taylor’s business, which reports no business income. It instead reports advertising expenses of $290 and car and truck expenses of $73,740, resulting in a net loss of $74,030. Also included are a Form 4562, Depreciation and Amortization (Including Information on Listed Property), which states the Taylors represent they used two vehicles for business purposes, with a total of 130,513 business miles. Vehicle 1 was driven 65,212 miles and vehicle 2 was driven 65,301 miles. In response to line 24a, “Do you have evidence to support the business/investment use claimed?” their response was to check the box for “no.” Those business expenses reduced their adjusted gross income to $30,690. Since they had three minor children in 2013, they qualified for an earned income credit of $4,417 based on that income.

The IRS audited the Taylors, focusing on their car and truck expenses. The Taylors supplied two versions of a log purporting to show business miles driven for Mrs. Taylor’s business. The logs were not provided contemporaneously with her travel and state she drove the 130,513 miles on business, driving a 2004 Cadillac truck 41,483 miles and a 2006 BMW 89,030 miles. The Court states these logs are demonstrably unreliable because petitioners traded in the 2004 Cadillac truck with Mrs. Taylor signing an odometer disclosure statement reporting the odometer at time of sale as 102,345 miles while according to the provided logs the December 23, 2013 year end odometer reading was 154,990 miles. Similarly, the BMW’s trade-in odometer disclosure statement was 91,333 miles while the purported logs stated the December 17, 2013, reading to be 186,880 miles.

The Court also believed the log mileage to be inflated. The logs stated Mrs. Taylor drove the Cadillac 1,376 miles and the BMW 701 miles (totaling 2,077 miles) on September 22, 2013. The IRS points out the driving distance from Manhattan to Los Angeles is approximately 2,800 miles and “[a]t a constant speed of 70 miles per hour (“MPH”) it would take 29.7 hours to drive 2,077 miles.” The logs also report trips of 1,200 miles to 1,800 miles for other days.

The Court’s discussion within the order itself focuses on how the petitioners have not been responsive. They failed to plead or otherwise proceed within Rule 123(a). Because of the deemed established facts, the Court grants the IRS Motion for Default Judgment and enters a decision against the Taylors.

In the decision, Judge Jacobs ordered and decided that for 2013 there is a deficiency of $14,186 and an IRC section 6663 civil fraud penalty of $10,639.50 (the IRS sought an IRC section 6662 accuracy-related penalty in the alternative so that is denied as moot). Additionally, Judge Jacobs orders and decides “that the 10-year ban for claiming the earned income credit, pursuant to section 32(k)(1)(B)(I), is imposed as sought in respondent’s amended answer.”

There is no analysis regarding the 10-year ban and whether the Court has jurisdiction to impose it. The closest is a prior mention of the affirmative allegations that “petitioners…should be subject to the 10-year ban on claiming the earned income credit.”

We come back to a jurisdictional issue for the Tax Court. In the Taylor case, the Court had the 2013 tax return at issue. The jurisdictional issue is what authority the Court has with regard to the EITC ban in a case like this. Is the jurisdiction for the year in which the ban arises (2013) or for the years in which the ban will take effect (10 following years, presumably starting with 2014)?

The Tax Court is a court of limited jurisdiction. IRC section 6214(a) states that Tax Court has jurisdiction to redetermine the correct amount of a deficiency at issue. The disallowed refundable credit banned through the EITC ban affects future years that are not before the Tax Court. In fact, IRC section 6214(b) states that the Court “shall have no jurisdiction to determine whether or not the tax for any other year…has been overpaid or underpaid.”

I note that the IRS does have the ability to assert fraud and get facts deemed stipulated in order for the IRS to meet its burden of proof on the issue of fraud. I provide a quote from Console v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2001-32 at *12, aff’d 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 15535 (3d Cir. 2003): “It is well settled in this Court that the Commissioner may establish fraud by relying upon matters deemed admitted under Rule 90. Marshall v. Commissioner, 85 T.C. 267 (1985); Morrison v. Commissioner, 81 T.C. 644, 651 (1983); Doncaster v. Commissioner, 77 T.C. 334, 336 (1981). The Commissioner may also establish fraud by relying on facts deemed to be stipulated under Rule 91(f). Ambroselli v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 1999-158.” My thanks to Carl Smith for providing this note and citation.

One case to consider is a prior Tax Court case, Ballard v. Commissioner, which included a Tax Court judge’s reluctance to issue an order regarding a 2-year ban on the EITC. Les Book provided prior commentary in Procedurally Taxing here. In that posting, there are links to other posts, including Carl Smith’s discussion of the jurisdictional issue of the EITC ban in the Tax Court. I agree with Les’s view that the Tax Court does not have authority to apply an EITC ban for a year of fraudulent behavior (or reckless/intentional disregard), which could be called a conduct year.

Specifically for the Taylors, I argue that while the petitioners should potentially be subject to the ban, the only year before the Court was 2013. It was within the Court’s authority to find that there was fraud in 2013, but not within their authority to apply an EITC ban for later years.

I am unsure if the Taylors were outmatched in the courtroom. If all of the allegations against them are true, though, I can understand the claims of fraud the IRS made against them. Whether their goal was to inflate business expenses to claim the earned income tax credit or not, the results are unrealistic business miles and mileage logs that do not match. Even if one does not agree with the EITC ban, the ban is an area the IRS has authority to administer. This case does not provide justification that the Tax Court has jurisdiction to administer the EITC ban for later years when 2013 was the conduct year before the Court so went a step too far in ordering the imposition of the EITC ban for the Taylors.