- 16 -
that, taken together, make up the complete class of persons who
satisfy the single operative criterion.
Moreover, petitioners’ argument founders again in failing to
appreciate that what it mischaracterizes as separate criteria are
expressed as negations (i.e., persons who did not receive
deficiency notices or persons who did not otherwise have an
opportunity to dispute the tax liability). Rather than
signifying alternative circumstances in which a person will be
qualified to challenge the underlying tax liability (as
petitioners contend), these negations denote, in essence,
circumstances in which a person may be disqualified from doing
so.8
In sum, the sense of section 6330(c)(2)(B) is that a person
may challenge the tax liability in a collection proceeding if
that person lacked another opportunity to raise the challenge, by
8 The flaws in petitioners’ logic might be made more evident
with a homely example: a child is told that she may have dessert
if she did not eat a cookie on the schoolbus or did not otherwise
have sweets after school. This ingenious child--petitioners’
figurative progeny--confesses that she ate sweets all afternoon
but argues that she is still entitled to dessert because she ate
no cookie on the bus. Result: no dessert.
If the child is not only ingenious but persistent as well,
she might protest that this result effectively transforms
disjunctive criteria (not eat a cookie or not otherwise have
sweets) into conjunctive criteria (not eat a cookie and not
otherwise have sweets). She might be answered that there never
were two criteria to be either disjoined or conjoined, but only
the one operative criterion that she not eat sweets after school,
the business about the cookie being a prime example of the
stricture.
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Last modified: May 25, 2011