Cite as: 506 U. S. 523 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
years after the return was filed . . . ." The issue before us is whether "the" return is that of petitioner or that of the corporation which was the source of the loss and credit claimed on petitioner's return. Petitioner's position is that the Commissioner had three years from the date his return was filed to object to that return in any respect except the loss and credit items passed through to him by the corporation. To disallow those items, petitioner argues, the Commissioner must have acted within three years of the filing of the corporate return. Under this approach, "the" return referred to in § 6501(a) becomes two returns, and petitioner claims that there is adequate statutory basis for his submission. We have no doubt that the courts below properly concluded, as the Commissioner argued, that it is the filing of petitioner's return that triggers the running of the statutory period.
The Commissioner can only determine whether the taxpayer understated his tax obligation and should be assessed a deficiency after examining that taxpayer's return. Plainly, then, "the" return referred to in § 6501(a) is the return of the taxpayer against whom a deficiency is assessed. Here, the Commissioner sought to assess taxes which petitioner owed under the Code because his return had erroneously reported a loss and credit to which he was not entitled. The fact that the corporation's return erroneously asserted a loss and credit to be passed through to its shareholders is of no consequence. In this case, the errors on the corporate return did not and could not affect the tax liability of the corporation, and hence the Commissioner could only assess a deficiency against the stockholder-taxpayer whose return claimed the benefit of the errors. Under the plain language of § 6501(a), the Commissioner's time to make the assessment ran from the filing date of petitioner's return.6
6 Even if it could credibly be argued that § 6501(a) is ambiguous because it does not expressly indicate how it is to be applied to S corporations and their stockholders, the Commissioner's construction of the section is
527
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