- 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.Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011