Court Opinion

ID: 9875421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-26 22:33:31.983588+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:47:00.799083
License: Public Domain

CLIFTON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The position advocated by the Government and accepted by the majority exalts form over substance. The Government admitted as much in so many words at oral argument. The statute says that the limitations period starts running on “the date on which the Secretary is furnished the information so required.” 26 U.S.C. § 6501(c)(10)(a). But the Government insists that it doesn’t actually matter when the relevant information was provided to the appropriate IRS agents because the provision of information doesn’t count unless it is presented to the IRS on Form 8886. That’s not a logical reading of the statute.
It would have been simple to write a statute that stated that the limitations period starts to run on “the date when the taxpayer provides the information to the Secretary on the form specified by the Secretary,” but that’s not how Congress wrote the statute. Alternatively, it would have been simple for the Secretary to have promulgated a regulation that clearly informed all taxpayers that providing information to the IRS doesn’t count unless the information is provided on the specified form. There was no such clearly stated statute or regulation at the time the IRS learned of May’s listed transaction, however. In its briefs, the Government traced through 26 U.S.C. § 6011(a), then Treasury Regulation § 1.6011-4, and then Revenue Procedure 2005-26, and then argued that the Revenue Procedure was entitled to significant deference. That so much effort is needed to support a simple albeit illogical interpretation — that providing the information doesn’t count if it’s not on the specified form — suggests to me that the interpretation is not one that should be adopted.
I have no quarrel with the Government’s position that the taxpayer should be required to provide the relevant information in a coherent form to the appropriate tax agents. An interpretation that started the limitations period as soon as some IRS office, somewhere, had the information or as soon as IRS agents collectively had the information would be both illogical and open to abuse. I don’t disagree that it might be appropriate to remand this case to the district court to apply a more precise interpretation of the statute. But I am not persuaded by the Government’s interpretation, especially in the context of a civil penalty, and cannot join my colleagues in adopting it.
I respectfully dissent.