- 18 -
Court’s discretionary review” and may be rejected in the
interests of justice. McGowan v. Commissioner, 67 T.C. 599, 607
(1976). We further observe that the enactment of section 6015,
including the creation of a stand alone proceeding in section
6015(e), has injected into this calculus considerations not
present when cases such as Estate of Ravetti v. United States, 37
F.3d 1393 (9th Cir. 1994), Garvey v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo.
1993-354, and Himmelwright v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1988-114,
were decided. Principally, we believe that the interests of
justice would be ill served if the rights of the nonelecting
spouse were to differ according to the procedural posture in
which the issue of relief under section 6015 is brought before
the Court. Identical issues before a single tribunal should
receive similar treatment. For this reason, we cannot summarily
dispose of the instant matter on the grounds of the above-
mentioned cases involving section 6013(e) without addressing
whether a nonelecting spouse would be afforded additional rights
in a section 6015(e) proceeding and whether to extend any such
rights to the present proceeding as well.
In the context of a stand alone proceeding, the right to
which the nonelecting spouse is entitled by the terms of section
6015(e)(4) is “an opportunity to become a party”. However,
because this statutory phrase is undefined, any conclusion
regarding what it entails must be based upon a probing of
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011