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4 

BOECHLER v. COMMISSIONER 

Opinion of the Court 

Boechler  contends  that  it  refers  only  to  the  immediately 
preceding phrase: a “petition [to] the Tax Court for review 
of  such  determination.”    If  so,  the  filing  deadline  is  inde-
pendent of the jurisdictional grant.  The Commissioner, by 
contrast, argues that “such matter” refers to the entire first
clause of the sentence, sweeping in the deadline and grant-
ing  jurisdiction  only  over  petitions  filed  within  that  time. 
On this reading, the deadline is jurisdictional.

As we see it, the text does not clearly mandate the juris-
dictional reading.  It is hard to see how it could, given that 
“such matter” lacks a clear antecedent.  The word “matter” 
does  not  appear  elsewhere  in  §6330(d)(1),  and  no  other 
“ ‘noun or noun phrase’ ” serves as the obvious antecedent.
A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of
Legal Texts 144 (2012).  Both parties cope with this awk-
ward  structure  by  treating  “petition”  as  a  noun,  even 
though  it  appears  in  the  provision  as  a  verb.  Maybe  the
parties are right that the statute asks the single word “pe-
tition” to perform double duty.  But relying on this gram-
matical sleight of hand does not exactly help the Commis-
sioner’s  argument  that  the  text  is  clear.    Moreover,  even 
taking “petition” as a noun, Boechler’s interpretation has a
small edge.  The last-antecedent rule instructs that the cor-
rect  antecedent  is  usually  “the  nearest  reasonable”  one. 
Ibid.  And Boechler links “such matter” to the phrase im-
mediately preceding the jurisdictional parenthetical, while
the Commissioner stretches back one phrase more.  This is 
hardly a slam dunk for Boechler, but it is one reason to pre-
fer its reading—or at least to regard the Commissioner’s as
not clearly right.

It  is  also  worth  noting  that  the  parties’  back-and-forth
does  not  exhaust  the  universe  of  plausible  ways  to  read 
“such matter.”  For example, “such matter” might refer to 
“such determination” (which in turn refers to a “determina-
tion under this section”).  Or “such matter” might refer to
the  preceding  subsection’s  list  of  “[m]atters”  that  may  be