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possibility that the petition might have been mailed after
midnight, and thus on March 30, rather than March 29, 1999.
Gladney testified that she mailed the petition by certified
mail and paid postage accordingly but never received a sender’s
receipt, because she had left the receipt at her office and did
not have time to return for it. Gladney suggested no plausible
reason why the sender’s receipt should have been detached from
the Form 3800 (certified mail receipt) of which it was originally
part, though her testimony clearly suggests that she was aware
beforehand that it had been detached and remained at her office.
More fundamentally, however, we find Gladney’s testimony
implausible and self-serving. As a practicing tax attorney,
Gladney should have been aware of the risks associated with
mailing the petition at the 23d hour of the last day prescribed
for filing it with the Court. Cf. Drake v. Commissioner, 554
F.2d 736, 739 (5th Cir. 1977) (“we could hardly ignore the fact
that the petition was mailed at 6:00 p.m. on the ninetieth day--a
circumstance which could not help but raise the spectre of
possible timeliness problems”). By mailing the petition by
certified mail, as she did, she could overcome those risks by
virtue of having a timely postmarked sender’s receipt. See sec.
301.7502-1(c)(2), Proced. & Admin. Regs. She claims not to have
received one. The evidence indicates that there would have been
hundreds of Forms 3800 at the post office. The record contains
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