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an obligation to exercise reasonable diligence to
ascertain the taxpayer’s correct address if prior to
mailing the deficiency notice [he] has become aware
that the address last known to the agency may be
incorrect. * * * [Follum v. Commissioner, supra at
119-120.]
The Court of Appeals recently applied this standard in Sicari v.
Commissioner, 136 F.3d 925 (2d Cir. 1998), revg. and remanding
T.C. Memo. 1997-104, in which it found that the Commissioner had
failed to exercise reasonable diligence where, before mailing the
deficiency notice to the old address, he had received several
indications that the taxpayers had a new address and had himself
entered it into a database and used it in two letters to the
taxpayers as well as in a filing in the taxpayer husband’s
bankruptcy case. Moreover, strictly speaking the “old” and “new”
addresses at issue in Sicari were not for different locations;
the “new” address was merely a more precise refinement of the
“old” one (involving the addition of a box number), and the Court
of Appeals concluded that the identity of the two addresses would
have been “apparent” upon their comparison if the Service had
conducted a diligent search of all its databases.
In the instant case, we believe that respondent exercised
reasonable diligence to ascertain petitioners’ correct address in
the circumstances. We note first that the instant case is
distinguishable from Sicari in critical respects. In Sicari,
over 3 months prior to mailing the deficiency notice to the “old”
address, the Commissioner had received a formal notification of
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