Court Opinion

ID: 9482430
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:50:09.924631+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:59.425746
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in part III. B of the court’s opinion. However, I dissent from part III. A and would hold that a five-year statute of limitations applies to bar penalties for any action more than five years before the penalty assessments were made. The reasoning for applying the five-year statute of limitations of 28 U.S.C. § 2462 to the assessment of penalties in this case is quite straightforward. Section 2462 provides a catchall statute of limitations for all cases where the Internal Revenue Code does not otherwise provide such a statute (which includes, presumably, an explicitly unlimited period for prosecution). The parties all agree that the penalty assessment sections of 26 U.S.C. § 6701 contain no explicit statute of limitations.
The court’s opinion argues at great length, and ably summarizes at pages 18-19, reasons why no statute of limitation should, in general theory, apply to the situation in this case. However, the two reasons so ably advanced: (1) statutes of limitations against actions by the government are not usually favored; and, (2) statutes of limitations do not generally apply to sections combating fraud, are both reasons that simply demonstrate why Congress might have not enacted a specific statute of limitations for the section in question.
However, in enacting 28 U.S.C. § 2462, the Congress did provide a statute of limitations that applies to cases brought by the government, and it did provide a statute of limitations that had effect over every section within its compass, whether or not that section could be construed as an antifraud provision. Section 2462 simply makes no such exception. By its own terms, it applies to proceedings to enforce “any civil ... penalty,” “[ejxcept as otherwise provided by act of Congress.... ” Therefore, I cannot agree with the court’s ingenious interpretation that what is clearly a “catchall” statute does not in fact catch a clearly relevant section. I would hold that this section applies and that the IRS’s action for penalty assessments against Mullikin is time-barred with regard to these penalties.1
It is particularly notable that many anti-fraud provisions explicitly provide for an unlimited statute of limitations. See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. § 6501(c)(1) and (2); 26 U.S.C. § 6696(d)(1). Thus, the failure to include such an unlimited period in § 6701 is additional evidence that the explicit words of the catchall provision should apply. Indeed, it is ironic that the court refers, at page 929, to the concession by the IRS that “Congress[ ] fail[ed] to include ... a statute of limitations” in § 6701, yet on the very next page it “finds that Congress has otherwise provided for a statute of limitations .... ”

. At page 929, footnote 17, the court's opinion states that there is no need to address the argument that § 2462 could not apply as a bar to an action on a penalty assessment because such assessment was neither an “action" nor a “proceeding for the enforcement of any civil penalty.” I would reject this argument because the assessment is a prerequisite to, and thus part of, the measures for the enforcement of a civil penalty. It would seem quite odd to say that the very act that initiates the actions leading to the collection of the penalty, a stream of events that must at some point be a proceeding, is not itself part of the proceeding.