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postal employees stole the mail; or (4) the IRS lost or misfiled
the returns because of its ineptitude. To say the least, we
regard such speculations as farfetched and unreliable.
Moreover, we think it is highly improbable that the returns
allegedly deposited with the U.S. Postal Service in late May for
3 successive years would not have been delivered to the IRS or
that each return was lost or misplaced by the IRS.
Petitioner also offered his son's testimony in an effort to
corroborate his own to show that petitioners timely filed their
returns for each year. Petitioner and his son testified that
petitioners' Federal income tax return for each of the years in
issue was mailed during their drive home from work. But the son
later testified that the returns were mailed late at night. When
asked by the Court to reconcile the two seemingly conflicting
statements, the son admitted that he did not remember the
specific circumstances surrounding the mailing of petitioners'
returns. However, the son testified that his returns for 1985
through 1987, which he thought were mailed at the same time
petitioners' returns for these years were mailed, were timely
received by the IRS.
Respondent's position is that petitioners have failed to
prove that their returns for the years in issue were timely
filed. We agree.
Section 7502(a) provides that the date of the U.S. postmark
stamped on the cover in which a return is filed is deemed the
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