In the United States Court of Federal Claims

No. 13-4 T

(Filed: August 26, 2013)

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JIBRIL LUGMAN IBRAHIM, *

*

Plaintiff, *

* Illegal Exaction; Tax Refund Claim; 31 

v. * U.S.C. § 3720A(c); Tax Refund Offset;

* Student Loan Debt; pro se.

THE UNITED STATES, *

*

Defendant. *

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Jibril Lugman Ibrahim, Washington, DC, pro se.

Paul G. Galindo, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for defendant.

OPINION AND ORDER

SWEENEY, Judge

Plaintiff Jibril Lugman Ibrahim initiated this action seeking a refund of taxes from the 

Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for the 2011 tax period. Plaintiff seeks to recover a $5,022 

refund he claimed on his initial Form 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, or, alternatively,

a $4,861 refund he claimed on his amended Form 1040. The case is now before the court on 

defendant’s motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) of 

the Rules of the United States Court of Federal Claims (“RCFC”). Defendant argues plaintiff 

has not satisfied the requirement of full payment of taxes to invoke this court’s jurisdiction over 

a tax refund claim. For the reasons set forth below, the court GRANTS IN PART and DENIES 

IN PART defendant’s motion to dismiss.

I. BACKGROUND 

In March 2012, plaintiff, through a tax preparer, filed a Form 1040 for the 2011 tax year. 

Compl. ¶ 3. Defendant attached as an exhibit to its motion to dismiss a copy of the Certificate of 

Assessments, Payments, and Other Specified Matters (“Form 4340”) that details the IRS’s record 

of plaintiff’s 2011 tax return. Mot., Ex. A. The dates listed on the Form 4340, however, appear 

not to match the likely order of events. See id. The Form 4340 shows that plaintiff claimed $0 

of tax liability for the 2011 tax year. See id. It also shows that plaintiff was entitled to a refund

of $5,022, including $928 in withheld taxes, $1,000 for an unspecified refundable credit, and 

$3,094 for an earned income credit. See id. 
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The IRS initially allowed plaintiff a refund of $1,928 resulting from his tax withholdings 

and unspecified refundable credit. See id. Plaintiff alleges that in July 2012, the IRS notified

him that he was not eligible to receive the earned income credit and requested that plaintiff file 

an amended Form 1040. Compl. ¶ 5. Plaintiff claims that he then filed the amended form

through a tax preparer and requested a tax refund of $4,861.1 Id. Then, on April 2, 2012, the 

IRS apparently approved a $1,928 refund to plaintiff. See

Instead of paying the $1,928 refund to plaintiff, the IRS transferred the amount to the 

United States Department of Education (“ED”). 

Mot., Ex. A. 

See id.

The Treasury offset plaintiff’s tax refund to repay part of a $2,500 loan that Grant K. 

Anderson received in 1984 under the Federal Family Education Loan Program. 

 The United States Department of 

Treasury (“Treasury”) Offset Program allows the Treasury to transfer a taxpayer’s refund to 

another federal agency to pay a taxpayer’s past due debt. 26 U.S.C. § 6402(d) (2012) (describing 

how the Treasury collects debts owed to other federal agencies); 31 U.S.C. § 3720A (2006)

(explaining when the Treasury will reduce a taxpayer’s refund by the amount of a debt owed to 

another federal agency). 

See Compl. 

¶¶ 6, 13. Plaintiff’s social security number appears on the promissory note, but the borrower 

listed on the note is Grant K. Anderson. See id. ¶ 8. Plaintiff claims that he is not Grant K. 

Anderson, and thus, the ED unlawfully offset plaintiff’s tax refund to pay the student loan debt. 

Id. ¶¶ 13-15. To explain the discrepancy between the use of plaintiff’s social security number 

and the use of another name, plaintiff suggests that someone stole his identity to obtain the loan. 

Id. ¶ 14. Plaintiff claims that he proved that he is not Grant K. Anderson in 2010 when he sent 

the IRS his original birth certificate, driver’s license, and name change form from 1989.2

 Id.

Following a later review of plaintiff’s 2011 tax return, which appears to have occurred on 

April 15, 2012, the IRS reversed its allowance of the unspecified refundable credit to plaintiff 

and assessed an additional tax of $533 with interest of $38.44. See Mot., Ex. A. The IRS took 

this action after it had already transferred these amounts as an offset to the ED. See id. The 

reversal and additional tax, combined with the prior offset, resulted in plaintiff owing $1,571.44. 

Plaintiff’s 2011 tax withholdings, however, were nearly $400 more than the IRS ultimately 

determined he owed. See id.

II. DISCUSSION

 Because plaintiff has not paid the outstanding amount, defendant 

moved to dismiss plaintiff’s complaint, arguing that this court only has jurisdiction over tax 

refund claims when the plaintiff has fully paid the disputed taxes. 

The court liberally construes the pleadings of a pro se plaintiff, Estelle v. Gamble, 429 

U.S. 97, 106 (1976), and reviews a pro se

 1 On the Form 4340, there is no record of plaintiff filing an amended Form 1040 seeking 

a tax refund of $4,861. See Mot., Ex. A. It is unclear how plaintiff arrived at a claimed refund 

of $4,861 if his claim for the $3,094 earned income credit was reduced from the refund of $5,022 

that plaintiff sought on his original Form 1040.

complaint, “however inartfully pleaded,” with “less 

2 Neither party states whether plaintiff changed his name from Grant K. Anderson to 

Jibril Lugman Ibrahim or any other details about Grant K. Anderson.
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stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers.” Hughes v. Rowe, 449 U.S. 5, 9 

(1980) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Nonetheless, the plaintiff bears the 

burden of establishing subject matter jurisdiction. Alder Terrace, Inc. v. United States

Plaintiff invokes this court’s jurisdiction under the Tucker Act, which confers jurisdiction 

“upon any claim against the United States founded either upon the Constitution, or any Act of 

Congress, or any regulation of an executive department.” 28 U.S.C. § 1491 (2012). While the 

Tucker Act waives sovereign immunity, it does not alone provide the court with jurisdiction over 

a claim. 

, 161 F.3d 

1372, 1377 (Fed. Cir. 1998). 

Jan’s Helicopter Serv., Inc. v. FAA, 525 F.3d 1299, 1305-06 (Fed. Cir. 2008). Rather, a 

plaintiff must also identify “‘a separate source of substantive law that creates the right to money 

damages.’” Id. at 1306 (quoting Fisher v. United States, 402 F.3d 1167, 1172 (Fed. Cir. 2005)

(en banc)). Plaintiff’s tax refund claim falls under 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a) (2012), which mandates 

the payment of money in federal tax refund actions. Daniels v. United States

Defendant argues, however, that the court does not have jurisdiction over this tax refund 

claim. A plaintiff cannot invoke this court’s jurisdiction over a tax refund claim until the

plaintiff has fully paid the taxes for the disputed period. 

, 77 Fed. Cl. 251, 

254 (2007). Under 28 U.S.C. § 1346(a)(1), the court has jurisdiction over “[a]ny civil action 

against the United States for the recovery of any internal-revenue tax alleged to have been 

erroneously or illegally assessed or collected.” 

See Ledford v. United States

Nevertheless, by liberally construing plaintiff’s complaint, the court does possess 

jurisdiction over plaintiff’s claim against the ED for illegal exaction of his tax refund by the 

means of an offset. While “[t]he prototypical illegal exaction claim is ‘a tax refund suit alleging 

that taxes have been improperly collected or withheld by the government,’” 

, 297 F.3d, 

1378, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2002). Because plaintiff owes the IRS an unpaid balance, this court lacks 

jurisdiction over plaintiff’s claim for a tax refund. 

Kipple v. United 

States, 102 Fed. Cl. 773, 777 (2012) (quoting Norman v. United States

Because the full payment rule does not apply to plaintiff’s illegal exaction claim, the 

court has jurisdiction over plaintiff’s suit to recover the amount of the offset as long as the 

complaint states an illegal exaction claim for the tax refund offset. Generally, an illegal exaction 

claim arises when the government improperly receives or exacts money from an individual. 

, 429 F.3d 1081, 1095 

(Fed. Cir. 2005)), a plaintiff may allege an illegal exaction claim that is not a tax refund. Section 

6402(g) of Title 26 of the United States Code states that “[n]o action brought against the United 

States to recover the amount of any such reduction [of a tax refund by an offset] shall be 

considered to be a suit for a refund of tax.” Plaintiff’s illegal exaction claim based on the offset 

is therefore not a suit for a refund his taxes. Thus, plaintiff did not need to have previously fully 

paid his taxes for the disputed period in order to challenge the defendant’s offset. 

See

Norman, 429 F.3d at 1095. “[A] plaintiff claiming jurisdiction based on an illegal exaction must 

demonstrate that 1) the exaction was directly caused by a misapplication of a statute, and 2) the 

remedy implicit in the statute is the return of the funds.” Pennoni v. United States, 79 Fed. Cl. 

552, 561 (2007). This court has construed pro se complaints that seek to recover tax refunds 

unlawfully offset as claims for illegal exactions of tax refund offsets rather than tax refund 

claims. See Wagstaff v. United States, 105 Fed. Cl. 99 (2012) (construing a pro se plaintiff’s 

claim to recover the amount of her tax refund used for a tax refund offset as an illegal exaction 
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claim and finding that the United States Court of Federal Claims has jurisdiction to hear such a 

claim); Kipple, 102 Fed. Cl. 773 (holding that the court would construe a pro se

Plaintiff’s complaint, read similarly, meets the requirements for a claim of illegal 

exaction based on a tax refund offset against the ED.

plaintiff’s claim

to recover the amount of a tax refund unlawfully offset as an illegal exaction claim, over which 

the United States Court of Federal Claims has jurisdiction).

3

 First, plaintiff alleges the ED misapplied 

the statute authorizing tax refund offsets. That statute, 31 U.S.C. § 3720A(c), provides that when

a federal agency learns that an individual “owes to such agency a past due legally enforceable 

debt, the Secretary of Treasury shall determine whether any amounts, as refunds of Federal taxes 

paid, are payable to such person,” and if the Secretary finds some refunds are available, “he shall 

reduce such refunds by an amount equal to the amount of such debt.” Plaintiff claims the

government wrongly determined that plaintiff owes a “past due legally enforceable debt” 

because plaintiff suggests another individual used plaintiff’s information to obtain the federal 

student loan under the name of Grant K. Anderson. Thus, plaintiff claims that the ED

misapplied § 3720A when it offset plaintiff’s tax refund to satisfy another individual’s debt. 

Second, this court has previously determined that § 3720A implicitly requires a monetary 

remedy because “absent a monetary remedy, a litigant has no recourse to recover . . . income tax 

refunds unlawfully offset.” Wagstaff, 105 Fed. Cl. at 122; Kipple

Because the court construes plaintiff’s complaint to assert a claim for illegal exaction by 

means of an improper offset, this court has jurisdiction over plaintiff’s claim to recover $1,928,

the amount of plaintiff’s tax refund that was offset to pay the student loan debt.

, 102 Fed. Cl. at 777 (“The 

remedy [for an illegal exaction under 31 U.S.C. § 3720A] would be a return of the money.”). 

III. CONCLUSION

This court lacks jurisdiction over plaintiff’s tax refund claim because plaintiff has not 

fully paid the disputed taxes. Liberally construing plaintiff’s pro se

 3 This claim can only be brought against the ED because a taxpayer cannot bring a claim 

against the Treasury based on unlawful offsets. 26 U.S.C. § 6402(g) (“No court of the United 

States shall have jurisdiction to hear any action, whether legal or equitable, brought to restrain or 

review [a tax refund offset].”). Although § 6402(g) “prohibits federal courts from adjudicating a 

taxpayer’s challenge to the Department of Treasury’s actions when offsetting a tax refund . . .[,]

§ 6402(g) . . . preserves the right of taxpayers to bring any ‘legal, equitable or administrative 

action against the Federal agency . . . to which the amount of such reduction was paid’ by 

Treasury.” Wagstaff, 105 Fed. Cl. at 112 n.11 (quoting 26 U.S.C. § 6402(g)). Thus, while 

plaintiff cannot challenge the tax refund offset by bringing a claim against the Treasury, plaintiff 

can challenge the offset by bringing a claim against the ED because the agency received the 

offset of plaintiff’s tax refund.

pleadings, the Tucker Act, 

however, confers jurisdiction over a claim against the ED for illegal exaction based on a tax 

refund offset. Accordingly, for the foregoing reasons, the court GRANTS IN PART and 

DENIES IN PART defendant’s motion to dismiss pursuant to RCFC 12(b)(1) for lack of subject 

matter jurisdiction.
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By no later than Monday, September 9, 2013, defendant shall file an answer to 

plaintiff’s complaint. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

MARGARET M. SWEENEY

Judge