- 10 -
certain excise taxes.3 After assessment, the Secretary may
proceed to collect assessed amounts, including interest, subject
to other provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. Thus, in the
case of taxes which are subject to the deficiency procedures as
described in section 6211(a), the Secretary is motivated to issue
a notice of deficiency, since he is otherwise prohibited from
assessing and collecting a deficiency in tax. In contrast,
section 6404(g) involves a situation where the Secretary has
previously assessed and possibly collected a tax, penalty, and
interest, and the taxpayer requests that the assessment for
interest be abated and that any overpayment be refunded. In this
connection, a taxpayer's request for abatement of interest is
similar to a refund claim. In fact, section 6404(g)(2)(B)
provides that rules similar to those of section 6512(b) (which
permit the Tax Court to order a refund of an overpayment and
interest) shall apply for purposes of section 6404(g).
With this background, we return to petitioners' contention
that the Court should impose a 6-month deadline upon respondent
(similar to the 6-month rule imposed under section 6532 with
respect to claims for refund) within which respondent is obliged
to either grant or deny a taxpayer's request for abatement of
3 Sec. 6213(a) refers to secs. 6851, 6852 and 6861
(termination and jeopardy assessments) which are exceptions to
the normal deficiency procedures and not relevant to our
discussion herein.
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011