Opinion ID: 4542457
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: r.b. 984.

Text: Appellants contend that “FedEx First Overnight” should be deemed to be essentially the same delivery service as “FedEx Priority Overnight” and “FedEx Standard Overnight,” and that therefore the service Appellants used here is actually covered by the then-existing designations in Notice 2004-83. Alternatively, Appellants argue that, because FedEx First Overnight was indisputably eligible for 18 ORGANIC CANNABIS FOUND. V. CIR designation on the day they used it, and was formally designated just two weeks later, Appellants should be deemed to have substantially complied with § 7502(f)’s mailbox rule. These arguments cannot be squared with the language of the statute. Congress did not merely require that a private delivery service meet certain functional criteria concerning the operation of that delivery service; it also pointedly insisted that the service must be “designated by the Secretary for purposes of this section.” I.R.C. § 7502(f)(2) (emphasis added). Given the wide range of documents that are eligible for § 7502(f)’s mailbox rule and the need for clear-cut rules on questions of timeliness, Congress understandably elected to establish a quality-control regime in which the IRS would vet each such service in advance and then issue bright-line designations as to which services are subject to the mailbox rule and which are not. The statutory language also makes clear that there must be separate designations for each “service” offered by a private courier—and not merely a designation of the courier itself—because § 7502(f) expressly distinguishes between the “trade or business” that engages in delivery of packages (e.g., FedEx) and the various “delivery service[s]” by which it does so (e.g., FedEx Priority Overnight). See id. (Secretary may designate a “delivery service provided by a trade or business” if, inter alia, the service records “the date on which [an] item [to be delivered] was given to such trade or business for delivery” (emphasis added)). This additional requirement of separate formal designations of each “service” offered by a given “trade or business” would be read out of the statute if we were to accept Appellants’ invitation to stretch the existing designations to cover other similar services offered by a particular courier. And the same would be true if we accepted Appellants’ argument that use of a non-designated ORGANIC CANNABIS FOUND. V. CIR 19 service should be deemed to substantially comply with the statute. Because the particular service Appellants used here was not on the IRS’s formal list of designated delivery services, the Tax Court correctly held that § 7502(f) was inapplicable, and Appellants’ petitions therefore cannot be deemed to have been delivered to the Tax Court on the date when Appellants gave them to FedEx. Because the Tax Court did not receive the petitions until one day after the April 22, 2015 due date, the petitions were untimely.