throughout the i r s is brief the tax court's opinion it focuses on whose fault the lay was and the fact that the delay was not the fault of the i r s and therefore there shouldn't be an a no it did look first to the statute and it's a statute provides relief for you get it this the statute is ambiguous the statute doesn't say a whole heck of a lot other than the fact that it broadens the grounds upon which offers can be allowed next to look to the regulations that are adopted by the commission with the authority of the congress right that's your own source you have now is written by somebody somewhere along the legislative process but i think that that this is as i say i stream an ambiguous statute i also think that the regulations we did not argue are brief that the regulation should be invalidated we believe that the regulations as they stand would allow for the relief that that we request and what we complain about is the i r s refusal to look at  longstanding delays other than in cases where the the delay would have allowed relief under section sixty four zero four and we believe that by doing that they've completely interest where there was a quote ministerial the lay on the part of the i r s ten years later congress was on happy with the narrow interpretation of the phrase minister old bely and in fact expanded it to something called managerial delay or error two years later in one nine hundred ninety eight the senate held hearings it was concerned about abuses by the internal revenue service as part of the reforms they passed they passed this what i see here is a just a long continuum which makes very clear what can crash the congressional desire is and that's to relieve the suffering of taxpayers who get these huge amounts of interest assessed against them which are out of all out of all proportion to the original tax in this case the interest was four times the amount of tax that that was impose not the law your honor but in fact in these type of collections of process cases the question of routinely look to the internal revenue manual to determine whether or not the i r s abused of its discretion so you're absolutely know it's not simply my view as to what the the legislative history is or what congress desired this is also been set forth by the taxpayer advocate the taxpayer advocate is charged by the congress with looking after the interests of all taxpayers and she filed a report again cited in our graves indicating that she felt that the i r s was not complying with the congressional in t in implementing these changes and in the offers she referred to the i r s this refusal to accept offers based upon long standing delay as being troublesome and she also noted that the i r s is interpretation of the law not permitted e t a offers and cases in cases that did not qualify under section sixty four of four as ignoring the legislative history argument in two sentences indicating that on the record although the taxpayers had presented a quote legitimate b view of their possible future needs the it determined that the that there was no abus discretion by the iris in my view this is a relatively simple mathematical exercise there are four or five facts which i don't think are fairly in  fargo had been diagnosed with a progressive and deteriorating the mentioned which is the doctor said would result in his being unable to care for himself the taxpayer submitted an estimate of those cost based upon publicly available  indicating the cost could run as much as ninety thousand dollars a year and indicating that those costs were going to increase at the right rate faster than inflation  edition of fact is the taxpayers assets not including their home and cars was eight hundred fifty one thousand and it's also a fact that the i r s appeals officer never disputed the amount of the taxpayer's assets never disputed the cost of the nursing home care never disputed the diagnosis all the underlying facts were that were not were not spewed by the appeals officer and he apparently made his decision on the basis of those facts and the tax court never disputed that these facts were or end correct and if you simply do the math at ninety thousand dollars a year those assets are go evaporate in ten years so i think it was a true abuse of discretion for the for the ira to conclude in the tax court to conclude that there was no significant economic hardship to these these individuals if there are no further questions i'm going to sit down for the mo refer to certain circumstances in which offers can be accepted and these circumstances and certain vaal taxpayers who invested in abusive tax shelters extremely complicated partnerships which invested in other partnerships it's a multi t situation of course it's going to involve a long a long period of time and it's not the i r s it's job to ensure the taxpayers don't have to pay additional interest just the time value of money because the those investigations are going to go on  years to negotiate settlement agreements between the tax matters partners of the partnerships the taxpayers were invested in and the iraqis to come to the settlement agreements the task leaders partner should have had instead of just one of those quicker and you'll note that within one year and super refund the taxpayer can pay the tax and also pay the interest and salafi have just lived on it at the time the audit of the partnership starts and they pay the taxes super refund and they did with the refund on the back burner until after on the basis of the tax court decision now i will grant you that at the time that an audit begins all of the partners in a partnership are not notified just the tax matters partner who is notified and it's his job or her job do i notify the taxpayers that they have rights to join into the action and find out and act as much as they can and the taxpayer payers here didn't do so they have a right to be more involved but the test for proceedings have been upheld before and they're and they it's the statutory mechanism that helped things up in this case there was no instance of any kind of delay on any part that they were just not pushing things forward now there's basis for negotiating these liabilities simply on the basis that there was a delay period the legislative history the regulations say look to the circumstances in the circumstances if it promotes taxpayer compliance then consider the offer in compromise that regulations that out examples if a man was you know a taxpayer was ill and one year and didn't file a return and several years later he gets a bill for a very high life military and it's because that i rest when i hadn't found it made a return for him and he shouldn't know that liability the regulation he says that's a good case where you come in and you say look i had no idea about this i was put in the in a coma or something and the regulation promotes such a settlement these circumstances do not do that if you look at the beagles case which the taxpayer cite in their brief the eagles case recites the history of what the t what congress did to try to cut down on the tax court backlog in one thousand nine hundred four and one of the things it did was to institute tax made tax motivated transaction higher interest why was that it was to provide a disincentive for people to get involved in just these transactions that are at issue you hear if they hadn't been involved in such complicated like that and the kelly course found sham transactions we wouldn't have this problem and the high bill of interest here did not earn this decision their collection would result in an inability to meet reasonable basic living expenses and compromise of the liability will not undermine compliance by taxpayers with a tax law and a compromise on this basis can be had and that's clearly not the evidence here the evidence here is that they had assets of over a million dollars that they had income every year at the time they filed their offer of a hundred forty thousand dollars a year that was expected to continue their an let me address a few of the points that that were raised by opposing counsel he mentions that he doesn't know why it took six years from the time of the kelly case and so all the time the taxpayers liability was the term that's proper part of the problem it's in the record that we requested and the appeals officer at the time made some attempts to the term and what the cause of the six year  was and in fact all he got back was a was a little was an answer saying it was quote in litigation there was no reason it should have taken six years from the time of the kelly case i think that you know the government's as well was the tax matters partner maybe he wasn't negotiating there was nothing stopping the i r s from moving forward with the litigation and didn't have to wait for the tax matters partner if there was the way  and i would point the court to the tax courts jacobs case which again is mentioned in the brief which talks about delay under section sixty four zero four and in that circumstance the tax court indicated that it was up to the s to come in and show what the causes for the delay were in that those causes were reasonable because it's the i r s that's in control of this information the taxpayer has has no practical way of knowing if the i r s doesn't tell us what the cause of the delay was other causes of delay and i think it's sort of interesting opposing counsel indicated that well once these agreements had been signed it only took the iris a year to notify the taxpayers well the reason it took them a year and the reason that they got there was because had they waited more than a year then the statue imitations was expired so when the i r s is under a statutory deadline it  move quickly another reason for the delay in this case prior to the kelly case was because the ira and this is mentioned in the beazley history explain that norman swan the promoter of this tax shelter was under criminal investigation by the i r s that the laid the determination in this case in addition apparently there was misconduct by mr swan that at the original trial of the underlyin case there was some conversations with witnesses i'm not sure exactly but the case had to be retried so this is a you know a very unusual case and for the government to suggest well this was complicated complicated facts i r s head i mean the taxpayers got themselves involved enough in a two tier shelter and that's what sticks so long i think the facts are otherwise this is an unusual  going back to second to the economic hardship argument the government mentioned one hundred forty thousand dollars a year in income by the taxpayers in fact and where the government is getting this number from is the  there was an indication that on the taxpayer's one nine hundred ninety nine return they had an adjusted gross income in that amount the tax return is not in the record and we don't know what that consisted of but we do know is that by the year two thousand when they filled out the financial statement they indicated their income was one hundred thousand dollars and that didn't include any other expenses for their workers on the six thousand dollars in expenses listed on the financial statement  and again that didn't include things like food clothing and it's cetera so i know the i r s would like to paint these folks as rich taxpayers they're not impoverished but on the other hand they do have substantial financial needs and in the future and to say that they're speculative or that there was no trial i mean i think it's very clear from the from the record that the taxpayer has presented evidence of these future financial hardships and there was there was never any contention by anyone that and any stage that these contentions were untrue and for the for the government to argue now well it's speculative i suppose the future is always speculative but there was a good deal of evidence in the record that was never there and there's no contrary evidence in