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appropriate, proportionate, and specifically directed response to
the vagueness and inadequacy of the notice in failing to set
forth any matter other than to express the intent to assess a
specified amount of a particular tax.
Section 7522(a) was a signal from Congress that vague
notices would thenceforth be disfavored. Shifting the burden of
proof to the Commissioner under section 7522(a) is an appropriate
way to implement the not too clearly expressed intent of
Congress. In this regard, the "imaginative reconstruction"
applied by Judge Learned Hand in other contexts, see, e.g.,
Lehigh Valley Coal Co. v. Yensavage, 218 F. 547, 553 (2d Cir.
1914)("Such statutes are partial * * * they should be construed,
not as theorems of Euclid, but with some imagination of the
purposes which lie behind them."), and espoused by Judge Posner,
as well as by our own Judge Raum, points the direction in which
we and the courts of appeals should go. See Posner, Statutory
Interpretation--in the Classroom and in the Courtroom, 50 U. Chi.
L. Rev. 800, 817 (1983).
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