Court Opinion

ID: 9485839
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:31:30.701237+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:23.601376
License: Public Domain

RYMER, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the judgment but write separately because I believe the Koffs’ claim that no proper assessment was made against them is jurisdictionally barred. Elias v. Connett, 908 F.2d 521, 527 (9th Cir.1990) (“A *1301taxpayer may not use a section 2410 action to collaterally attack the merits of an assessment.”)- However, their claim that the IRS’s failure to follow the assessment procedures of 26 U.S.C. § 6203 renders the tax lien against them invalid is cognizable under § 2410. Alford v. United States, 934 F.2d 229, 232 (9th Cir.1991); see also Elias, 908 F.2d at 527; James v. United States, 970 F.2d 750, 755 (10th Cir.1992).
Judge O’Scannlain opines that Elias and Arford are in conflict, because Alford permits a challenge under § 2410 to “the procedural lapses of the assessment under § 6203.” 934 F.2d at 232. Judge O’Scannlain reads this language as conflicting with the rule of Elias that § 2410 may not be used to challenge the validity of an assessment.
I read Afford to hold that § 2410 allows a taxpayer to make a procedural argument that a defect in the recording of an assessment or in the transmission of a copy of the record of assessment renders a tax lien invalid. To read Afford to mean that § 2410 permits a procedural challenge to the assessment itself is to create conflict where there is none and to assume that the Afford panel badly misread Elias, on which it relied.