Court Opinion

ID: 9442907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:03:44.842844+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:16.888614
License: Public Domain

PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I reluctantly dissent from the judgment of my brethren in this case. I wish the law were as they find it to be, because it is my belief that the Government ought to set a high standard in its dealings and relationships with citizens and that the word of a duly authorized Government agent, acting within the scope of his authority, ought to be as good as a Government bond. But unfortunately, as I see it, a long line of cases almost without exception, beginning with the Couzens case in 19281 and running down through Schafer v. Helvering2 and beyond, establish the law otherwise. In the Schafer case, Judge Groner, writing for this court, said that wrongs between man and man which shock the conscience cannot affect the right of the sovereign to the full measure of a statute. “Whoever deals with the government,” he wrote, “does so with notice that no agent can, by neglect or acquiescence, commit it to an erroneous interpretation of the law.” 3 Many cases on the point are collected in Mertens’s Law of Federal Income Taxation (1948 rev. ed.) at Sections 60.13-60.18.
I do not see that a revenue agent’s statement to a taxpayer that the statute did not require a return to be filed is different from any statement by such an agent upon any question of statutory interpretation. And the Commissioner’s about-face on the question of law here involved is not different from his change of mind on other points upon other occasions. The established rule is that in contemplation of law he was, under such circumstances, wrong the first time and the Government is not bound by his error.
I repeat that I wish the law were as the opinion of the court in this case holds it to be, but I am convinced that it is not.

. James Couzens, 11 B.T.A. 1040.

. 1936, 65 App.D.C. 292, 83 F.2d 317, affirmed, 1936, 299 U.S. 171, 57 S.Ct. 148, 81 L.Ed. 101.

. Id., 65 App.D.C. at 295, 83 F.2d at 320.