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nonrebate issue is off limits under petitioner’s theory,
respondent and the Court would be effectively precluded from ever
considering the Court’s own jurisdiction.
Precluding any consideration of the Court’s jurisdiction
would produce an unjust result. Even though petitioner
represented in the stipulation of settled issues that it would
not raise the jurisdictional issue, petitioner’s change of
position is not necessarily the source of the injustice. The
source of the injustice is petitioner’s attempt to use the
opinion of the bankruptcy court, which quite clearly was never
presented with the issue of how its nonrebate finding might
affect this Court’s jurisdiction, to prevent any adjudication on
the merits of petitioner’s jurisdictional argument. Even if all
the requirements for collateral estoppel were satisfied in the
case at hand, it would not be in the interests of justice to
apply the doctrine because respondent did not have a full and
fair opportunity to litigate the issue in the bankruptcy court.
We conclude that petitioner may not use the doctrine of
collateral estoppel to prevent the Court from considering
whether the 1981 and 1984 tentative refunds paid to petitioner
were nonrebate refunds.
Tentative Refunds as Rebate Refunds
Petitioner contends the tentative carryback adjustments it
received from respondent are nonrebate refunds because, as the
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